The Terror of the Music Writers' Racial Furor

On Slate, John Cook's buttoned-up, though hardly backed-up riff of a few old blog posts by Sasha Frere-Jones and Jessica Hopper begs two question: can a manifesto (hating rap=hating black) really be gleaned from a few fiery posts by successively influential music writers; and either way, fuck Pitchfork for making music writing the money ticket in recent years. Stick to crackpot adjectives and me-first absolute phrases; leave the social posturing to politicians and athletes.

Still - and not to wax cracker here - Hopper's claim against the Mag Fields "whiteness" is as crass as her, and SFJ's, own projection that Merritt's pooh-poohing of Beyonce, Prince, and others means he hates black people - at least, if either one was ever even saying that.

If SFJ's oft-writerly The New Yorker criticism (his wistful Arctic Monkeys' splurge aside) pumps tunes unfamiliar, let alone unappealing, does that mean I hate Houston? I hope not. The 'Stros do have the Rocket. Better question: do I resent Kanye because I don't own Late Registration, or any rap records released since 2001? However flimsy Cook's indictment of SFJ & Hopper is (the pickings are pretty slim from both blogs' archives), he does expose their suggestions of security, which seek to assure a Talk-O'-Towny readership that at least they're not as white as Stephin Merritt because they read Sasha.

SFJ opened up the field today on his blog, asking some wider questions, which while thoughtfully New Yorker, are pretty frivolous. It's only pop music after all, right?

Maybe not: that I love Pavement does say something about my choice to be a slacker - I mean, SM and Spiral Stairs speak to my liberal-arts college procrastination, right? Maybe they are social actors in my quite-white life, which currently isn't "terrified that entertainment might be tainted by the problems of the social sphere that entertainment is so often employed to block out." I only find that terror in my prep school memories of rich, padded Young Republicans blasting DMX in their newly-leased cars. Meanwhile, I listen to Pavement, Stephin Merritt, and, no offense, not Kanye.