LOL! That was so good, I had to post it here for posterity. Hail to Como, the conservative's singer.
Real conservatives like Perry Como
Not having a clue who the Violent Femmes are -- this is the sign of a free spirit in today's homogenized culture
Mark Steyn
National Post
The last time I said something nice about Perry Como it wound up in The Washington Post. Joe Queenan was writing about the alleged phenomenon of "conservative cool," having found himself on ABC's Politically Incorrect opposite various leggy blond vixens in tight mini-dresses who were hot for missile defence. Evidently rattled by this, Queenan was relieved to discover that there was still one uncool conservative: me. "In the course of a wonderful diatribe arguing that Frank Sinatra is a million times cooler than any contemporary rock star," he wrote, "Steyn went out on a limb and said that Perry Como has made better records in the past 20 years than the Rolling Stones.
"Now, anyone can go out and say that Frank Sinatra has made better records in the past 20 years than the Rolling Stones -- in part because it's true -- but it seems to me that making the same bold claim for Perry Como expresses something at the very heart of true conservatism. Real conservatives don't like groups called Smashing Pumpkins. Real conservatives don't wear leopard-skin skirts. Real conservatives tell the public that they should be buying more Perry Como records."
Er, whoa, steady on there, man. You're pulling me a little further than I'd intended to go. As it happened, around that time I bought a Perry Como box set, the usual zillion-CD career retrospective, and, while I like "Chi-Baba Chi-Baba," "N'yot N'yow," "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo," "Zing Zing Zoom Zoom," "Chincherinchee," "Papaya Mama" and "Hot Diggety (Dog Ziggety)" as much as the next fellow, the charm of the post-war "novelty song" begins to pall after the first 60 or 70. Unlike Sinatra, Como was happy to sing whatever was put in front of him. On the other hand, "If I Loved You" is just gorgeous, and there's that wonderful, shimmering, ethereal version of "Toyland" on The Perry Como Christmas Album, and later on came "And I Love You So" and "It's Impossible," which, even with the soupy Seventies soft-rock arrangements, are better than anything else going on in the Top 40 back then. Perry had a glorious voice but he didn't belabour the point. For one small example, compare Ezio Pinza's "Some Enchanted Evening" on the South Pacific cast album with Perry's version: he hits high notes pianissimo rather than fortissimo, which is actually a lot more difficult, and a lot more sensual. The big bellowers like Barbra and Celine use high notes to advertise themselves; Perry was content to serve the song, the mood, the moment.
Still, my original defence of Perry was only in response to the casual slur of some rock bore: horrified to find out that Mick Jagger was not after all a "Street Fighting Man" but only a middle-class art college poseur who'd rather swank about with Princess Margaret, the critic Sean O'Hagen had sniffed, "The Stones are now about as dangerous as Perry Como." When you think about it, the requirement of a pop star to be "dangerous" is a curious one. Fortunately, Puffy, Snoop, the late Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. have been happy to rise to O'Hagen's challenge, and been widely praised for it by his fellow sissy-boy critics at The New York Times et al and by such leading thinkers as Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.
And therein lies the paradox. These days, it's safe to be dangerous. The really dangerous thing is to be safe, like Perry -- wear a cardigan, sit in a rocking chair, sing "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas." That's dangerous, or -- to use another favourite shaft in the critical quiver -- "transgressive." In an age of dreary boomer hegemony, when Al Gore quotes Dylan and Lennon and Liberal hit man Warren Kinsella takes time off from hailing Jean Chrétien's canny stewardship of Quebec golf courses to pen a fond eulogy for the late Joey Ramone, Perry Como is on the cutting-edge of the counter-counter-culture. In a world of stultifying rock conformism, square is the new cool.
Perry died last weekend. The media didn't make a big deal about it. He had a bunch of Number Ones, sold more records than Dylan, was at one point the highest-paid performer in the history of American TV, but none of it seemed to count for much by the end. As he put it, "I was a barber. Since then I've been a singer. That's it," and the rock crowd had little use for either his singing or his haircuts. But I only hope I live long enough to see the grizzled boomer rockosauruses fall into the same obscurity. The Sixties Jurassic rockers were the pioneers of the Clinto-Blairite Third Way: socially liberal but fiscally conservative, in favour of low taxes and economic growth, but relaxed about pot and sex and full of bullshit on the environment. No one figured out that winning formula faster than the corporate rockers. The Stones liked the songs of those old-time bluesmen, but they weren't going to end up sitting on a porch in the Mississippi Delta waiting for the welfare cheque. They were the first band with a registered trademark and a merchandising operation.
So now we have rock'n'roll government -- bloated, decadent, dependent on lasers and dry ice to conceal its fundamental banality. Those on the right have a choice. They can join the Gores and Kinsellas playing air guitar, as, say, William Weld, former Republican Governor of Massachusetts, used to do. Weld was not only a Jerry Garcia fan but also a great admirer of the Violent Femmes. (They're apparently a rock band and not Weld's core pro-choice constituency.) Or they can be Mister Squaresville like Weld's successor Paul Cellucci. At the state Republican convention, he entered to the strains of the Dave Matthews Band's "Ants Marching." Alas, whatever advantage he might have gained by this was thrown away when he then told stunned staffers that he'd ... never heard of the song! With aides still reeling from this shock, it then emerged that while attending ex officio the Eric Clapton gig Cellucci misheard the drugs classic "Cocaine" as a song about "Propane." The Boston Herald dubbed him "terminally unhip" and even his spin doctors gave up spinning. With a candour rare in his profession, Cellucci's shell-shocked campaign manager Rob Gray conceded: "He just has bad musical tastes." How bad? The Governor likes ... showtunes. Cellucci is now the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada, and Kinsella will be wasting his time if he expects the guy to join in any Sussex Drive Ramonalongs.
But I say: Hail Cellucci! Not knowing the words to "Cocaine," not recognizing the Dave Matthews Band, not having a clue who the Violent Femmes are, these are the signs of a free spirit in today's homogenized culture. As I noted the other week, one of the best things about George W. Bush is that he's culturally conservative and unembarrassed about it --he has the confidence not to be hip, a crucial quality when you're being bombarded with modish nonsense on everything from the environment to hate crimes. Mrs. Thatcher was exemplary in this regard. Asked to name a record she liked, she'd cite "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" -- a title which neatly encapsulates how the conservative's compassion is tempered by cost-benefit analysis.
In other words, despite my sheepishness at the time, I now agree with Joe Queenan's mocking reductio of my argument: Go out and buy more Perry Como records. It's important for conservatives to think outside the box -- the box in this case being a 12-CD set of "200 Baby Boom Rock Classics You Hear Every Time You Switch On The Radio." True conservatives don't just talk the talk, they walk the walk. They talk about low taxes and small government, but then they walk over to the CD player and put on "Papa Loves Mambo."
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