It’s his writing style that gets up my nose more than anything else. It’s just as glib and surface-shiny as the pop he promotes. Scratch it too hard, though, and you’ll find a huge amount of half-baked thoughts, strawman attacks, and conclusions based more on wishful thinking than reality. To be fair, one could probably make some of the same points about my own writing, I suppose. Of course, I’m not writing for the alleged “newspaper of record”, and I don’t have a battalion of fact-checkers and editors vetting my material. For good or ill, Dana has never touched so much as a comma of one of my pieces. Any half-baked ideas or poorly constructed sentences you see under my by-line are mine and mine alone.

Be that as it may, I think our biggest difference is that I’ve never had any sort of pretensions of objectivity. I am not a citizen-journalist. I’m just some guy with an opinion and access to a computer. I try to stay as objective as I can, but everything I write here is filtered through my own personality. And if I can’t write fairly about something, I generally won’t touch it.

Sanneh, on the other hand... For all his talk about an inclusive pop world (and there’s been a lot), he’s strikingly conservative at heart. Let’s take a closer look at a couple of his most recent reviews, shall we?

In the March 23rd, 2006 edition of the New York Times, Sanneh published a mish-mash of a piece, entitled “Variations on the Theme of What Protest Music Is, Onstage and on Screen”. [Ed: Found the link.] Under the guise of reviewing both the film “V For Vendetta” and the “Bring ‘Em Home Now” concert earlier that week, Sanneh vents his contempt not only for his usual whipping boy, “tired old” rock & roll (the use of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” over the end credits is “rather tiresome…”) but for the very idea of protest music. Well, what he really demonstrates is that he has absolutely no understanding of how protest music works or why it is made.

I haven’t seen “V For Vendetta”; when the author of the source material for a film demands to have his name removed from the credits – even if that author is the occasionally somewhat batshit Alan Moore – I take that as a tip that the movie might stink up the joint a little. Therefore, I’ll have to take Sanneh’s at his word on his description of this particular scene: V’s lair is equipped with an 872-song jukebox, although we only hear three songs from it: Julie London’s version of Arthur Hamilton’s ‘Cry Me A River’, Cat Power’s version of Lou Reed’s ‘I Found A Reason’, and ‘Bird Gurhl’, and original by Antony and the Johnsons. V proudly explains that much of his stash comes from ‘the vaults of the Ministry of Objectional Material.’ If these seemingly innocuous songs are illegal, then listening to them is an act of civil disobedience. Isn’t that the fantasy of politically minded pop fans everywhere? Taking a stand is as easy as dialing up a record on a jukebox. (Emphasis added.) Leave it to Kelefa Sanneh to reduce political activism to an act of consumerism. That’s a typical Sanneh tactic, by the way – make an outrageous statement in the form of a rhetorical question, to give it the illusion of reality. “Isn’t that the fantasy of all conservative thinkers? Turning back the clock is as easy as feasting on a bowl of newborn puppies every day.”

While it might be his personal fantasy that ideology can be purchased, anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together knows that people who are actually politically motivated act on their beliefs. If the sort of dilettantism Sanneh attributes to “politically minded pop fans” had any weight to it, Rage Against The Machine would have toppled capitalism simply by getting a generation of suburban zombies to buy Che Guevara t-shirts. Most politically active people I know would laugh at such pretzel logic, and many of them would throw things at anyone advancing it. If there’s no follow-up, if the extent of one’s political stance is the purchase of an item, then it’s nothing more than a hollow gesture. When Billy Bragg sang, “So join the struggle while you may / The Revolution is just a T-shirt away”, he was not laying out the blueprint for the Great Leap Forward; he was, in fact, mocking the very attitude Sanneh attributes to those with interests beyond the flavor of the month. I always thought that the point was rather obvious. Now I’m not so sure.

A couple of paragraphs later, he quotes (out of context, as I’ll show in a moment) a piece from the New Republic on Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, one of the participants in “Bring ‘Em Home Now”. Sanneh cherry picks a line about Oberst’s voice being “ill-suited for stopping a war”, and another to the effect that, had the president heard Oberst’s song, he “would have paid the singer absolutely no mind”. If you look at the actual article, Jason Zengerle wasn’t so much assailing the protest singer as he was taking Oberst to task for being so goddamn jejune. (And rightly so, to my mind, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Here’s the first paragraph Sanneh quotes, in its entirety: So, without further ado, here are the opening lines of the protest song of the century: "When the president talks to God, are the conversations brief or long? Does he ask to rape our women's rights? And send poor farm kids off to die? Does God suggest an oil hike when the president talks to God?" Yes, the lyrics are that bad, and the instrumentation--provided by a lone, off-putting acoustic guitar--isn't much better. And then there's the problem of Oberst's voice: It is fey and timorous, which may be good for lamenting lost loves but is ill-suited for stopping a war. The line’s a little bit different in context, no?

Let’s place that second quote in context and see what happens: …when Oberst came out for his encore, he played "When the President Talks to God." Before launching into the song, Oberst made an announcement. "I want to wake up the [expletive] who sleeps across the street," he said. Alas, as the (Washington) Post noted, Bush was in Asia at that moment. But, even if he had been home, it's certain that the president, much as he ignores the newspapers, would have paid the singer absolutely no mind. Not so much a slam on the pointlessness of protest as it is a poke at both Bush and Mr. Bright Eyes.

Let me here add another quote from the same article – one that Sanneh chose to ignore: A good protest song is not simply political, nor is it narrowly confined to the issue that it's protesting. The best protest songs provide historical and artistic context for an alternative worldview and, in doing so, give legitimacy and a powerful sense of inevitability to the protest; even if the target of the protest never hears the actual song, he's ultimately unable to ignore its message and the followers that message inspires. To which I would add that the point of protest music’s is often not converting the doubter so much as it is comforting the believer. It’s a way of letting dissenters know that they are not alone. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips puts it this way: “We don't expect to change the war. I have no illusions that rock music has ever changed anything, but if nothing else, this is like praying. We sing it to the darkness, and it makes us feel better.”

The Lips’ new album, At War With The Mystics, (which you can stream from their site), is their most politicized release to date, which is to say that there’s some politically-tinged material on it at all. The Lips are not generally what you’d call “activists”, so for Coyne to suddenly be making statements like “I didn't want people to think we could just ignore everything else and sing about how wonderful the world is when we've got shit like George W. Bush” represents something of a shift in the pop landscape. When I pointed out the article on “Bring ‘Em Home Now”, Dana’s response was, “When I see the names ‘Peaches, Fischerspooner, Rufus Wainwright,’ I don't immediately think of protest music.” And she’s absolutely dead-on. You expect anti-war music from the likes of Billy Bragg and Sleater-Kinney; when musicians who’ve previously been wholly apolitical jump aboard the train, something’s happening.

Can we take as read that every reason ever given for Bush’s little adventure in Iraq, from the run-up to the invasion to “Mission Accomplished” and beyond, has been completely, unequivocally discredited? Because I have neither the time, the heart, nor the space to recount the myriad lies foisted upon the American public and the world at large in support of Operation Fund Haliburton. Let’s just say that Bush’s own core group is fleeing support of the war like rats from a sinking ship.

And yet we still have people like Sanneh making statements like “protest music is easy to hate, by definition: what song could possibly satisfy an activist?” Such vehemence. Where does it come from? Might it be that Sanneh and his ilk dislike seeing their own ostrich-like behavior thrown into sharp relief? Perhaps they still fail to see the truth about the neocon adventure through the looking-glass? Is it possible that, in fact, Sanneh actually thinks the invasion and subsequent reduction of Iraq to an anarchic colony on the brink of civil war was a good idea?

If there was any doubt as to Sanneh’s pro-war slant, I think it’s been laid to rest once and for all by his quasi-review of The Flaming Lips show Friday night. It seems that fluffy, goofy pop is fine and dandy, up to the point at which it becomes political. Then Sanneh turns shrill, grasping at anything with which he can beat the subject over the head. …(T)he concert ended with a loud, nasty surprise: another cover, this one a hackneyed antiwar statement. While the band members trudged through Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," familiar faces flashed on the screen: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, even though he quit the cabinet more than a year ago. Which brings to mind a thought: if any band has earned some time off, it's this one. (Emphasis added.) I will cop to the slight possibility that I’m reading more politics into Sanneh’s response than was intended, and that he reacted so vehemently to “War Pigs” because he just doesn’t dig the Sabbath. If that’s the case, though, his response is even pissier than I thought. When he asks why the band covered “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “War Pigs”*, he’s only pointing how far divorced from the band and their fans he actually is. I might’ve preferred to hear their take on Love’s “Seven and Seven Is”, but given who they are and where they’re coming from I can see why the Lips chose those covers. The band got it, the audience got it, and Sanneh was left standing in the corner, sounding like nothing so much as a bitter old man sucking his gums and complaining to anyone who’ll listen that they’re not serving liver and onions today like they’re supposed to.

Given Sanneh’s mention of Colin Powell, though, I’m pretty sure my original reading was right. The Flaming Lips were “giddy and off-kilter”, and therefore acceptable, up to the point where they got even somewhat political. Then they became The Band That Needed A Rest. And while we’re at it, why should Powell get a pass simply because he’s no longer a part of the cabinet? I’m willing to believe that he argued against the war during meeting with the president, but he also delivered that sack of bullshit about WMD his “superiors” sent with him to the UN, didn’t he? That makes him culpable, baby, no matter how you want to slice it. But I digress.

You can talk as much shit about Bono as you like; I will probably join you in mocking his messiah complex, but I won’t fault him for trying to address political problems. Hell, isn’t that what art and artists are for? Aren’t they supposed to hold the mirror up to society? Arguing against that aspect of creativity because you find it distasteful is reprehensible and comes very close indeed to calling for censorship. If you want to debate the relative merits of an artist on their artistry, that’s great. That’s what criticism is supposed to be, as far as I can tell. But when you start dismissing artists because of their politics, there’s a line that’s been crossed. Musicians are human, all too much so at times, and humans are (often) political. Let me put it this way: Damien Jurado makes some very good music. Because of his political beliefs (which he generally keeps out of his music, to the best of my knowledge), I don’t buy his records. However, if I were assigned to review his work I would probably mention my conflict in passing, but I don’t think I’d make it the focus of my piece. It’s all about the music, or at least it’s supposed to be.

I must admit, I find this side of Sanneh’s character somewhat puzzling, to say the least. As much as I may have disagreed with him in the past, I think the worst thing I could have said about him would have been to point out his occasional intellectual laziness. And honestly, who among us hasn’t been guilty of that from time to time?

And yet… Many good people were tricked by the government into getting behind al war that was dubious at best. The vast majority of them have come to see the chicanery employed by the Bush administration for what it is, and have withdrawn their support. Anyone remaining in favor of this war at this late date would seem to be either dumber than a sack of wet mice or a complete and utter tool of the military/industrial complex. Well, they could just be downright evil, yes, but I prefer not to think that of anyone outside the government. That leaves being a dupe or a stooge. Which is it, Mr. Sanneh?

*For those of you unfamiliar with the song in question, here are the lyrics:

Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.

Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.

Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!

There are a multitude of knocks one can make on Black Sabbath – I’ve made most of them myself, at one point or another – but this is actually one of Ozzy’s more defensible lyrics. I suppose one could make a case for "Time will tell on their power minds, making war just for fun" being on the trite side, but otherwise the song is pretty much spot on.