This is 100% uncut Grade A awesome (via) from back in the day when Bobo was running the Weekly Standard:
For the last few years, America has experienced a revival in swing dancing. Big bands and young neo-swing “jump and jive” groups like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies — who are currently receiving airplay on rock radio and selling ten thousand copies a week of their Zoot Suit Riot album — are once again playing the music of Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Louis Jordan, and Cab Calloway in clubs and ballrooms jammed to the walls with jitterbuggers, most of them in their teens, twenties, and thirties. Indeed, the phenomenon has gotten so big that the Gap clothing store is running an ad featuring jitterbuggers lindy-hopping to Louis Prima’s 1956 “Jump, Jive, and Wail.”
This is good news for conservatives. If swing takes over pop culture the way rock-and-roll did in the early 1950s, it could do more to repair the cultural damage of the last thirty years than the war on drugs, the Republican Congress, and the Christian Coalition combined.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid. It burns.
liberal
God, I hate this $hit.
The Pill was a much bigger influence on “culture” than any of those. Not to mention the spread of cheap telephony, television, and automobiles. Those things created cultural/social changes orders of magnitude bigger than feverish right-wing dreams about music or even social impacts of increases in the government dole.
JCJ
Darn tootin’! Why with that hippity hoppin rap from Nine Inch Nails is so popular with the kids I’ll never know!
David in NY
OK, but to be clear, unfortunately, Bobo did not himself write that. Maybe not surprisingly, somebody I never heard of did.
Legalize
Christ. Of course, Bobo loved that stupid fucking fad.
Mr Stagger Lee
The Zoot Suit riots in LA was a war against Mexican-Americans, conservatives back in the day railed against the “Negro” influence of jazz, it was considered music of the bordello and other unsavory elements. BoBo fails again.
MomSense
I retroactively loathe him.
Omnes Omnibus
I was in some of those clubs that were playing swing music back in the 90s. Mr. Judge would have been appalled at the amount of sex and drugs that was prevalent.
Zandar
I’m thinking that’s it’s just taken 15 years for Weekly Standard to notice.
Zifnab
I hear if you play a Cherry Poppin’ Daddies record backwards, it recites the 1984 Reagan state of the union address.
jibeaux
Is this the ancestral origin of “good news for conservatives”?
BudP
Hurry kids, learn all about Cab Calloway . So our culture may be repaired
Morzer
@Zifnab:
If you read a David Brooks column backwards you get the message “Fuck you for being right, Paul Krugman, you liberal elitist rhetorically superior bastard.”
NonyNony
How is swing dancing supposed to fix the cultural damage caused by the previous thirty years of the war on drugs, Republican Congresses and the Christian Coalition? I mean, I’m all for easy answers if they really work, but this strikes me as ridiculous. I mean the poisoning of the culture promulgated by the Christian Coalition alone is far more than any recreational dance movement could possibly hope to …
What’s that? I misread it? He’s suggesting that those groups were trying to fix damage to the culture?
Ah, well, nevermind. You can’t argue with anyone disengaged from reality like that.
ranchandsyrup
Did the war on drugs contribute to or repair cultural damage? A nice acid test question.
bcinaz
Listening to a new cover of a Count Basie tune will cause young people to forget about the pain of their student loans and no jobs? And they will somehow lose the causal thread. Bobo needs a time out from using his brain.
Morzer
Just noting this without comment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Kids
gocart mozart
So the movie “Swingers” promotes conservative values.
Keith
I remember that time period…”Swingers” had come out, and my friends inexplicably became big fans of Frank Sinatra (before that, it was Bob Marley-leading-to-more-obscure-Rastas). I was a bit oblivious to the pop culture roots of it, so my reaction was “When did all of you get really into Sinatra?” Thankfully, it didn’t last too long.
Shrillhouse
No health insurance? Do the jitterbug.
No job? Do the jitterbug.
Exxon dumped crude oil all over your lawn? Do the jitterbug (be careful, ’cause the lawn will be slippery)
Any questions?
No? Then do the jitterbug already.
Chet
Indeed, what band of the 90’s was better poised to return America to a more innocent and chaste age than the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies?
p.a.
Repair cultural damage? Isn’t dancing just sex standing, with music? Or is sex just dancing, horizontal (most of the time)?
Michele C
@NonyNony: Thank goodness that this isn’t violins on television …
Morzer
@Shrillhouse:
Fracking caused your lawn to collapse into a chemically-polluted abyss… why, the jitterbug will set you up for the day just fine!
Lawrence
The reason that, and everything else fun or novel about popular music in the ’90s, ground to a halt was media conglomerates like Clear Channel focus group testing radio formats down to the lowest common denominator. But hey, we’ll always have Nicleback.
dewzke
Ouch! What a fooking tool! Does he just type with his ass?
PeakVT
If swing takes over pop culture the way rock-and-roll did in the early 1950s, it could do more to repair the cultural damage of the last thirty years than the war on drugs, the Republican Congress, and the Christian Coalition combined.
Um, yeah.
How does someone come to write a sentence like that?
jonas
I wonder if he actually stopped for a second to reconsider his point as he wrote the words “cherry poppin'”.
Probably not.
Violet
@Chet: Was thinking the same thing. Does the author of that nonsense even know what that means?
canuckistani
I wonder if Brooks understands what “Cherry-Poppin'” means. Maybe he thinks it’s drinking a refreshing cola beverage.
Morzer
@jonas:
He probably thought it had something to do with fruit-flavored popcorn made by loving parental authority figures. Inbetween their bouts of chaste swing-dancing and anti-Communist pogroms.
Violet
@dewzke: His dick.
Morzer
@Violet:
Would that be a keyboard-pecker?
Villago Delenda Est
@p.a.:
Old joke. Q: Why do Baptists disapprove of sex while standing? A: It could lead to dancing.
ranchandsyrup
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I remember a college friend that got way into the scene–only Bombay sapphire in his gin and tonics, bought some suits and took some dance lessons–who said at the time that he wanted to get back into “white” music (his prior phase was ska/reggae). I suggested country, to no avail.
Roger Moore
This isn’t surprising, since the war on drugs, Republican Congress, and Christian Coalition have been a cause of, not a cure for, cultural damage. Shutting down the war on drugs would be a small net positive, and shutting down the Republicans and their Talibangelical allies would be a huge plus.
WereBear
I’ve heard of being “born old” but I do wonder at the twisted chasm of mind that would belch forth the mind of David Brooks.
Some are born, some are made, and some become… lickspittles. But Brooks must have sprang from the forehead of George Will.
Gin & Tonic
And, of course, if Bobo had been writing opinion columns during the first iteration of the jitterbug craze, he’d have been condemning it. As people who “think” like him then did.
Morzer
@Gin & Tonic:
I bet there are stone tablets from 10,000 BC condemning the new fad for these round wooden things the sinful attach to carts, contrary to God Swill.
Gin & Tonic
@ranchandsyrup: Idiocy on another level, too, as Sapphire isn’t made for mixing with soda. It’s for martinis.
aimai
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Thank you for getting that in so fast. The brilliant movie “American Me” begins with the Zoot Suit Riot and shows the hero’s mother getting raped by All American Soldiers before he is born. You’d have to know absolutely nothing about the period to think that swing dancing, zoot suits, or the entire musical/artistic era was not considered revolutionary and quite disturbing at the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@PeakVT:
Transporter accident, where your counterpart in the Spock-with-a-beard Universe gives you a piece of his mind.
Punchy
This was from 1998-ish, right? Isn’t that when CPD and their ZSR album were big?
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
You’ve captured the gestalt of BoBo perfectly here.
Forked Tongue
14 years after Mark Judge wrote that, someone, he’s pretty sure it was a black guy, stole his bike. I guess the Swing revival didn’t usher in a new era of traditional values after all.
Spaghetti Lee
Hey, I like CPD and BBVD. It pains me to know that Bobo likes them too.
MikeJ
This is Edroso’s regular beat, the Stalinism of the Republican party. Everything must be in service to the party or it is evil. Conversely, if you like something, it must be inherently conservative or it would be bad.
jamick6000
@PeakVT: hahah yeah i guess “be a really weird person”
Forked Tongue
@MikeJ: Plus, there is no end to the fun Edroso has with Mike “Gavreau” Judge.
mcd410x
Oh myyyyyy.
dewzke
@Violet: It must be a combination of both.
ranchandsyrup
@Gin & Tonic: If anyone would know, it’d be you. :)
I’m gin averse due to a very bad experience.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I remember that swing revival back in the late 90s/early 00s. Great days. My girlfriend at the time always used to love going out to those things and then we’d come home and she’d beg me to give her the ol’ meathammer in the ass. Nonstop all night fuck sessions. That’s what a couple of lines before the show will do for you.
Oh wait, that wasn’t Bobo’s point, was it?
SatanicPanic
This was remarkably prescient. Clearly this guy had his finger on the pulse of America.
Am I the only person who’s tired of swing? It’s on the radio all the time. Nothing but swing, swing, swing. If only Rap would make a comeback. I would love to turn on the radio and hear some rap.
Trinity
Wow. Is he for real?
Comrade Mary
Didn’t swing kids just looooooove reefer?
Also: FFS.
Yutsano
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Because that NEVER happened in the old days of swing. Hell, in BoBo’s world sex was invented by dirty fucking hippies some time around Woodstock. Before that all human reproduction was via immaculate conception and nary a seed was ever spilled.
russell
not only do i not understand stuff like this, i don’t want to understand stuff like this.
Cassidy
@Spaghetti Lee: And the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
kerFuFFler
I love swing dancing, but thinking that it will put the country on the path to righteousness is the dumbest thing ever.
SatanicPanic
@Forked Tongue: That story features one of my favorite blog comments ever by a commenter named Fish:
The Dude Abides
Tonic! In my gin!? Is there a malaria outbreak?
jamick6000
@ranchandsyrup: yeah, me too. don’t like the smell of it even.
BGK
@Spaghetti Lee:
I had the distinct pleasure of spending a couple of hours getting loaded with the boys from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (truly a right place-right time, long story) after one of their shows. As the kids say, a fun time was had by all. I expect, if shown this column, they would bust a gut, individually and collectively.
scav
Another charred and battered wreck sighting of a ‘demographic/cultural trends are on our side, all we have to do is wait passively’ expectation.
Still, let us consider which dance craze we must now turn to for redemption. Waltzing, but only if given permission by our best Almack’s Weekly Standard Chaperones? Who’s Lady “Silence” Jersey in this cosplay?
BGK
@Gin & Tonic:
Sigh…ideed it does. It also does decently well in an Aviation, should one be space- or weight-constrained and having to pass on toting the Plymouth Gin also too.
DFH no.6
@Cassidy:
Squirrel Nut Zippers! Caught them one time at a concert maybe 15 years ago (with a number of rock acts, including Neil Young). They were pretty good – loved the “chanteuse” singing of the girl in the band. My one and only foray into the 90s swing fad.
Got a CD of theirs around somewhere; should probably get it on my IPod sometime (their song “Hell” is a lot of fun).
MikeJ has this pegged exactly – as Edroso points out, fucking fascists are Stalinists when it comes to the arts. As asshole Bobo proved so amusingly here.
catclub
@canuckistani: The disturbing part for me was daddies, as in much younger girls and much older men, possibly related. But I guess I am just a prude.
Bubblegum Tate
Holy balls, that is outstanding.
Bubblegum Tate
Never mind; was already covered above.
Frankensteinbeck
@Spaghetti Lee:
No, he doesn’t. I’m also a big fan of neo-swing, and it could not be more obvious that the writer of this article (Someone said it wasn’t Bobo?) has never listened to it. He saw a picture of a man in a suit, heard maybe ten seconds tops, and went ‘Old things must encourage morality because I imagine everything was been perfect before these kids started stepping on my lawn.’
ronin122
Great news for John McCain 10 years before it became excellent news for John McCain! Nice to know that Bobo didn’t turn stupid recently, consistency is always nice
canuckistani
@catclub:
Yeah, I wondered about that too. I had a notion it was just swing jive lingo for “boyfriend”.
With super creepy Freudian overtones, of course.
johnny aquitard
Bobo is cultural damage. He’s necrotic tissue on the body politic, badly in need of debridement.
Egypt Steve
If they seriously think that jump & jive is going to reverse the cultural damage inflicted by rock & roll, they’re in for a nasty surprise. Wait ’til that cokie guy “Smokey” takes ’em down to China Town and shows ’em how to kick the gong around.
Hoodie
Bobo is either a complete poindexter or he’s the most sublime, long running piece of performance art in modern media, a better Stephen Colbert and than Colbert himself. My dad used to regale me with stories of all the midwestern farm girls he “thrown a fuck into” after those culture-enhancing swing dances in the 30’s and 40’s. I think Bobo survives as a columnist because he has no memory of the stupid shit he said the day before. Otherwise he’d be an alcoholic or blow his brains out.
Egypt Steve
Andrews Sisters:
Down at Manzanella Beach
GI cuddle with native peach
All night long make tropic love
Next day sit in sun, cool off, drinking
Rum and Coca-cola
Go down point Kuhmana
Both mother and daughter
Working for the Yankee Dollar.
That’s it: 1940s traditional values as embodied in pop music involved heading down to Trinidad, debauching local girls AND their mothers, and sitting around drunk all day.
Cassidy
@DFH no.6: I never got into “the fad”; I was always a punk and ska guy. I did find the swing revival fun to listen to, though. It was fresh and frenetic coming out of grunge. I think being a hardcore skanatic made it easier to accept the fad and the dressing up, etc. Ever been to a ska concert? Lots of suits, so it was nothing new to me.
Tonal Crow
@Hoodie:
Bobo survives as a columnist because he loves writing Republican propaganda. That it’s incoherent from day to day — or sentence to sentence — matters not at all, as long as it’s effective propaganda [1]. Which it is: Bobo bamboozles some of the totebagger demographic into accepting as plausible a Republican party that they’d otherwise deride as crazier than a swirling flock of dingbats.
[1] Please read “On Bullshit”.
JWL
Frank Sinatra, Jr. on the Beatles (1977)
“The Beatles have ruined the world! The Beatles are to blame for almost everything that’s wrong with the young generation. You name it and it’s their fault. I rue the day that the Beatles were, unfortunately, born into this world. They are, in my mind, responsible for most of the degeneration that has happened, not only musically but also in the sense of youth orientation and politically, too. They are the people who made it first publicly acceptable to spit in the eye of authority.”
Bruce S
Yeah, the music of Cab Calloway could do more to repair “cultural damage” in America than the War On Drugs. That’s self-evident. But to suggest it without a hint of irony? “Reefer Man?”
Bruce S
@JWL:
Yeah, what’s with this spitting in the eye of authority as opposed to taking a punch at whatever the hell irks you?
GxB
@canuckistani: These dillweeds can’t make those connections, just like being one toke over the line is A-OK since Jesus is mentioned immediately thereafter. Rx: More and bigger meteors – stat.
Andrew Abshier
There’s still a fair amount of swing dancing out there, but like other forms of social dance, the politics of the dancers, when known, are all over the place. I got into east coast swing after dancing salsa for a year, and had partners who were Democrats, Republicans, and everything in between. One of my favorite dance partners turned out to be Republican, who is about to move to the People’s Republic of California, thus taking one R vote out of Missouri. Baby steps!
It is not surprising that Bobo would grasp for a trend where there isn’t one.
Another Halocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it made me laugh raucously.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutOfCharacterMoment
Tried to find the Foxtrot from the 1990s where Jason goes to the comic book store and the owner has his Starfleet emblem on upside-down, but no luck. :(
Another Halocene Human
@Forked Tongue: Sounds like this guy: http://www.brofiling.com/post/49003925791/caucasian-male-carries-improvised-explosive-device
It sort of reminds me of those pastors who say Jesus wanted them to rape or coerce someone so it wasn’t, like, a felony. “I’m white, this is all just a misunderstanding!”
Another Halocene Human
@MikeJ: Research on adults who formerly lived under the Soviet regime showed that those with the authoritarian follower personality identified with Soviet notions, while US and Canadian natives of that type identified with conservative politics instead.
Another Halocene Human
@canuckistani: Yeah, one can at least pin it on 1950s jive talk, “mama” and “daddy” is what lovers call one another, actually not so Freudian when you consider in many cultures married-with-children spouses call each other “mother” and “father”. Beats the Hebrew term for a husband: “master”. (or “lord” could be a translation) puke!
Another Halocene Human
@Cassidy: Too bad Matt Drudge ruined fedoras for the rest of us.
Paulk
@Chet: For Bloody Bill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=167ZC8p1OrM
Villago Delenda Est
@JWL:
Poor Frank Jr. Fucking Beatles destroyed the career he thought he’d have.
Howlin Wolfe
@jibeaux: Wondered that myself, jibeaux.
rex everything
The jazz musicians from the time of Prohibition right up to the Beatles era were more into reefer, and way more into narcotics, than Brooks’ “rock-and-rollers who display the civil and sartorial nightmare” blah blah blah. And Billy Eckstine would have cut Brooks open with a switchblade between sets, from his saddle shoes right up to his fucking fedora.
themann1086
@jibeaux: My first thought was “of course it’s good news for conservatives!” Whenever I see “[arbitrary social event] is good news for [marginally-related or unrelated person/group]” I just crack up laughing.
gaderson
@Cassidy: I never got into “the fad”; I was always a punk and ska guy.
Which is funny as having grown up in the Daddies’ home town I knew of them as a ska act, and was surprised to find them (with the new tenor player who I played with in High School) as a swing act.
I’m more partial to The Might Blue Kings, a ‘jump blues’ style group from Chicago. Who I saw a few times at the Green Mill (Al Capone’s old joint).
JWL
@rex everything: Probably apocryphal, but my Uncle told me the story of a concert goer having said, “That Louis Armstrong must be one cheap bastard. I was just in the bathroom and his band were all in there together, sharing one cigarette”.
rex everything
@JWL:
Doesn’t sound apocryphal to me! Armstrong lived his last few decades in Queens; the word was he was welcoming to visitors & could reliably be found smoking marijuana on the porch.
rex everything
@liberal: Actually, the whole Kevin Drum “leaded gasoline is the culprit” thing is a pretty damn convincing explanation of the high-crime era. (Not that convincingness has ever been part of Brooks’ criteria for which theories to peddle…)
Wally Ballou
@Keith: Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. Is Sinatra one of the things you’re forbidden to like if you’re a Juicer?