Another whiner

Another Whiner On the South:

Sweet Mercy. Is this what it has come to?

This thought, which has been recurring to me regularly over the years as I've watched the Southernization of our national politics at the hands of the GOP and its evangelical base, surfaced again when I read a New York Times story today. The article was about an "American Idol" contestant--apparently quite talented--who was eliminated after she sang the title song from "Jesus Christ Superstar." When it debuted 38 years ago, the rock opera was considered controversial for its rather arch portrayal of a doubt-wracked, very human Jesus, but the music was so good and the lyrics so clever that it quickly became a huge hit. In the delicate balance of forces that have always defined American tastes--nativism and yahooism versus eagerness for the new and openness to innovation--art, or at least high craft, it seemed, had triumphed. But our national common denominator of taste is so altered today that the blasphemous dimension of "Jesus Christ Superstar" now trumps the artistic part. And somehow, no one is surprised.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. "Jesus Christ, Superstar?"

My father, a good lad from Tennessee, asked me for a copy for his birthday. It's always been a favorite of his. I sent it to him. So there.

If this is the ne plus ultra of your complaints against the South, is it too much to ask that you shut the @#$#@ up?

I mean, I'll be glad when we never hear another song written in the 1960s or 1970s that wasn't sung by Johnny Cash. "Classic" is a term not properly given to rock music, which was never meant to last longer than milk, and which retains about the same odor past its expiration date.

But that's not a regional complaint. And I'm as Southern as it gets.

UPDATE: And ya'll just tell me what's wrong with this bit of wisdom:



And if you don't like that one, how about this one, from the former Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of Georgia, Zell Miller?