It’s well past time for National Public Radio to drop its misleading moniker, along with its eternal feeding from the taxpayer trough.
The station has long since abandoned any pretense of serving the national public, catering instead to a narrow band of likeminded leftists who find racism, sexism and homophobia under every rock, no matter how deep they have to dig.
That certainly proves the case for NPR’s alleged music critic, Ann Powers, whose latest dose of woke lunacy condemns rock music as a whole, and the Beatles in particular, for perpetuating racism, sexism and homophobia.
“How did we get stuck with the idea that four white guys make a rock band?” Powers asked, apparently in a non-rhetorical daft query.
Daft because we, as in the national public, didn’t get stuck with that inherently racist and sexist idea. It’s only the bigoted and divisively-driven mindset of Powers and her ilk who view it through that ugly and tainted lens.
“The term ‘band guy’ is problematic, though, isn’t it?” Powers wrote. “In 2021 it’s as common for women, trans and nonbinary people to jump into rock’s timestream as it is for men.
“Yet something continues to infuse the rock mythos with the sweaty-socks scent of conventional, if boyish, masculinity,” She wrote. “Whiteness, too.”
Indeed, in Power’s twisted world, “rock’s defining narrative still stands alongside others that reflect the historic segregation of Anglo-American social spheres.
“Band guys,” she opined, “stand alongside other heroes of homosocial, mostly segregated histories: astronauts, high school state champions, foxhole dwellers, a rugby scrum.”
Never mind that the Beatles, who bear the brunt of Powers’ privileged male, white supremacist-crazed criticism, openly credited black musicians and their blues and jazz roots as inspirations and idols, refused to play segregated venues, and contributed to the cultural and musical rise of myriad modern-day black artists.
The Beatles, along with other vintage rock bands, were white males and must be condemned as such, according to the national public purveyors of truth.
It’s nonsense, of course, but NPR still soaks up millions of dollars every year in government largesse from the same taxpayers the station and its pundits insult on a regular basis.
And just as a quick endnote: after spending nearly 6,500 words spewing nonsense, NPR’s professional music critic had to issue a correction:
An earlier version of this piece located the Cavern Club, where The Beatles played shows early in the band’s career, in Hamburg, Germany. The Cavern Club is in Liverpool, England.
Powers knows the Beatles were racist and sexist, but apparently doesn’t know anything about their actual history and heritage.
