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Re:>Subject: (TV) Non TV but a read to discuss



At 4:54 AM +0000 12/28/02, sam matthews wrote:
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 15:55:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Jay <piazzasanmarco@yahoo.com posts:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/magazine/29RAMONE.html

wow. this article has that defensive david lee roth "rock- critics-only- like-elvis- costello- because- they- look- like- him" tone to it.

What I find interesting about the article is that it's a cookbook grad-school post-deconstruction move: take conventional logic (Dee Dee Ramone was more important than the Ratt guy) and argue its opposite. Big whoop.

Check out that pithy nugget about "good taste" being "a subjective device used to create gaps in the intellectual class structure." This could be restated as "The Ramones being more important than soundtrack-of-my-working-class-life Ratt? It's the academic intellectual Man keeping me down!" And of course this writer isn't one of those enfranchised tastemaker rock critics--no, he's on the barricades with the common man, baby. You know, the kind of people who read essays just like this one in the New York Times. Wait, you mean those people *don't* read essays like this one in the NYT? Oh. Well then it's written for people who *do* read these essays in the NYT (enfranchised tastemaker wannabes who don't listen to Ratt) but who feel guilty about it.

Sadly, I don't think that describes anyone who actually read it, and the above is just meant to demonstrate how odd and misguided I find the writer's stance. The tidbit about the Ratt guy being the first 80s hair guy to die from AIDS was news, however.
--
Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com/
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