Quote of the Day: Rage Against the Machine Rages Against Paul Ryan
August 19, 2012 11 Comments
Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteenbut doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
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Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta “rage” in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
English: Rage Against The Machine End of set, before leaving stage July 30 2011 L.A. Rising Music Festival 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
About Matthew
Ryan is just a Koch puppet, who have a 100% control of him.
You know, that would explain both Romney and Ryan. They are the Koch candidates putting forth Koch policies.
I wish more musicians would write op/eds to go along with cease & desist orders. But Dixie Chicks.
Abby Schreiber gives great rundown:
http://www.papermag.com/2012/08/cease_and_desist_letters.php
It makes me feel great about my 80s music heroes: Springsteen, McFerrin, Sting, Mellencamp, Talking Heads and… yes, Katrina & the Waves.
That’s a great list. I remember most of them happening at the time, but it’s easy to forget how many of them there are. I’d never heard about it happening as early as ’64 with “Hello Dolly” and have never heard of the Silversun Pickups — although now I’m a fan.
Speaking of well-deserved mockery of Ryan (and Romney), have you seen this yet?
I didn’t know about that! God bless the internet age…
I love the idea of this book and am glad it exists but wonder how entertaining it winds up being. Have you read it?
It’s amazing how many Paul Ryan-esque ex-frat boys respond to the sound of a band like Rage, seemingly managing to hear the fury of the music without ever being aware of how the lyrics skewer everything that they hold dear.
As much as I love RATM, it isn’t as though they couched their politics in dense codes or oblique allusions – they are as unapologetically left-wing and incendiary a band as can be imagined.
The Paul Ryan’s of the world are delusional if they think that their brand of noxious, inhuman, right wing hate has anything in common with the band who brought you “Rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun/These people ain’t seen a brown-skin man/Since their grandparents bought one”.
The mind boggles, frankly.
Bruce Springsteen’s left-leaning views are milder than RATM and they’re well-known now, but for years it was common for people to think of “Born in the U.S.A.” as blind flag-waving, as opposed to a tortured song about a disillusioned veteran returned home from an empty war to a land of economic desolation. You’re totally right about the RATM lyrics, and even though it’s not as fully articulated, even their name states their case. What did Paul Ryan think the “machine” was?
Cash machines. ATMs…
It’s in the name!
Wouldn’t that be RAATM?
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