02m04s Bowdlerizing a progressive classic. (It's not easy being progressive.)
04m52s Counterculture goes bourgeois. (The Stones un-stoned.)
06m44s Fox deep-sixes Idiocracy. (Too much reality.)
08m55s Florida drops Stephen Foster. (Black English yes, black dialect no.)
14m18s No more old, weird America. (Conform or else.)
18m29s Tennyson's bicentenary. (Poetry doesn't come any better.)
22m09s A look at our elites. (I don't like 'em.)
26m20s The folly of multiculturalism. (Dumbest thing since the Children's Crusade.)
32m56s The Tyler Clementi case goes to trial. (Hear my teeth grinding.)
40m46s Signoff.
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air!
Same deal as the last two weeks, listeners. This is the third week of my three-week vacation off the grid in China. This week's podcast, like the previous two weeks', has been pre-recorded and kept under lock and key in the subterranean vaults at VDARE.com world headquarters.
Being, in the nature of things, unable to comment on anything topical, I shall do what I did those previous two weeks: stitch together some segments from the first eight years of Radio Derb, the years 2004 to 2012. As before, these are actual clips from the actual sound files, all of which are archived on my personal website. Each clip will be bracketed here with little pip-pip sounds, thus. [Pips.]
And as with the previous two weeks' podcasts, this one is themed. The September 13th theme was immigration; the September 20th was national politics. This week's theme is "the culture," loosely defined to mean commentary on topics other than immigration and politics—topics like, for example, show business.
[Clip: Ethel Merman, "Let's go on with the show."]
02—Bowdlerizing a progressive classic. Part of the fun of being a conservative is pointing out how very un-progressive some progressive heroes of the past were. Early 20th-century Progressives all favored eugenics; 19th-century abolitionists wanted to send the freed blacks back to Africa; and so on.
When I did my teacher-training course back in 1967, this guy wasn't merely progressive, he was a Progressive's progressive.
In 2004, some of his views were … What's the word? … Oh, yes: problematic.
[Pips.]
Bowdlerizing a progressive classic.
[Pips.]
03—Counterculture goes bourgeois. Are the Rolling Stones part of American culture? I passed the commentary that follows in May of 2005.
A year later, in April 2006, the Stones gave a concert in China, so I guess they are part of international culture.
[Pips.]
Counterculture goes bourgeois.
[Pips.]
04—Fox deep-sixes Idiocracy. I don't comment on movies much because I don't watch many movies. Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy got my attention back in 2006, though.
[Pips.]
[Pips.]
05—Florida drops Stephen Foster. One of the glories of American culture is our popular songs; and one of the greatest contributors in that realm was Pennsylvania-born Stephen Foster, floruit the middle of the nineteenth century.
One of Foster's works was adopted as the official state song of Florida in 1935. I believe it still is the state song, or one of them; but the lyrics were causing trouble in 2007, and have since been modified.
Here's my commentary from the December 14th 2007 podcast.
[Pips.]
[Pips.]
06—The old, weird America. One of the occasionally recurring themes in my commentary is an affection for what Greil Marcus called "the old, weird America." That affection surfaced on the podcast in May 2008.
[Pips.]
The old, weird America? Lock 'em up!.
[Pips.]
A follow-up to that: The justices of both the Texas Third Appeal Court and the Texas state Supreme Court eventually agreed with me.
07—Tennyson anniversary. In my May 8th podcast, 2009 I made some scathing remarks about the state of poetry nowadays. That was on the accession of Britain's new poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, of whom we read on the Poetry Foundation website that, quote:
Her verses … are typically spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world.
A few weeks later came the bicentenary of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I took the opportunity to pay tribute to a real poet, one of the greatest.
[Pips.]
[Pips.]
08—A look at our elites. In October 2010 I took a look at our elites, and at elites in general.
[Pips.]
[Pips.]
09—The folly of multiculturalism. The doctrine of multiculturalism, I opined in this piece from February 2011, quote, "may be the greatest single act of mass folly since the Children's Crusade." Now, eight and a half years later, I think I may have understated the case.
[Pips.]
The folly of multiculturalism.
[Pips.]
10—The Tyler Clementi case goes to trial. I try to keep a calm and balanced tone in my podcast commentary, but it's not always easy. Some news stories just make me really, really angry.
Here is an instance. In this segment from February 2012 I think you can, if you listen carefully, hear the sound of my teeth grinding.
[Pips.]
The Tyler Clementi case goes to trial.
[Pips.]
11—Signoff. That's all I have for you in that third and final trip down Memory Lane. Next week I shall once again be reporting on current events, as usual … assuming the ChiComs let me out and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services let me in—which, given the many unkind things I have said about Chinese communism and U.S. immigration policy across several decades, cannot be guaranteed.
Those conditions permitting, there will be more from Radio Derb next week!
[Music clip: From Haydn's Derbyshire Marches]
