Okay Youngster

I’m determined not to be an old fart. Being an unapologetic leftist and a product of the sixties, I decided not to become a cliché aging hippie pining for the good ole days and wearing bag dresses (sorry but I hate that), and muttering “they just don’t make music like that anymore.” A part of that is keeping friends who are younger than I am. Another part is to listen to the perspective of my millennial son, a person who I admire very much.

So when this whole Joe Rogan thing started I decided to dip into some of the “free thinkers” who have podcasts these days. (Who doesn’t have a podcast these days?) It did not go well. About ten minutes in my teeth would start to vibrate and I would hold out for another few minutes and then just no. The free thinkers didn’t seem to be free. Their agenda was to have no agenda but everybody has some kind of agenda, so their presentation was the tossing around of notions to see what stuck while trying to remain entertaining enough to keep the attention of people who want their news in sound bites. Or worse, they framed everything in the range of some kind of polemic. This struck me as ironic, as that seemed to be exactly what the same people were criticizing the “mainstream media” for.

But here’s an example of what really got me. Cue the podcast, and the first thing was to sneer at Neil Young, either because his music was outdated or because he was a chump for going up against a Goliath like Spotify. Call me old fashioned, but I thought that was … well … activism. Generally, the next thing was to talk about what a “nice guy” Joe Rogan is, but that just.isn’t.the.point. Then, of course, come rants about free speech and cancel culture, despite the fact that we live in a free speech mecca and that JR won’t be cancelled in our lifetimes (which may be sooner rather than later thanks to people like JR). And then comes “but there are so many worse things happening why are we even talking about this,” but they ARE talking about this, and there are always — ALWAYS — worse things happening.

And here’s the clincher closeout, for real, talking head said this, “look to yourself.” WTF? Reminiscent of pseudo-fact champion Jordan Peterson saying to get your own house in order first, which basically means none of us will do anything about anything. Too busy organizing the junk drawer. So I guess I am a relic since while I see a lot of bad stuff going down daily and the American Dream is about dead, I also see some good things happening and I don’t think we should just give up, or just question everything, EVERYTHING, without some kind of ethical baseline or cause for hope.

-Cue Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young, maybe “Almost Cut My Hair”

Signed, Old Fart Who Wears Cashmere.