{"id":1153809,"date":"2021-12-25T11:20:20","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T16:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1153809"},"modified":"2021-12-25T11:20:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T16:20:22","slug":"graham-npr-finds-racism-in-the-beatles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/graham-npr-finds-racism-in-the-beatles\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAHAM: NPR Finds Racism In The Beatles"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgraham-npr-finds-racism-in-the-beatles%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1153809&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Beatles fans of all ages can flock to Disney Plus for a new documentary called \u201cGet Back\u201d that reassembles footage of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr creating music as the band begins to dissolve. NPR used the occasion for guilt-trip clickbait: \u201cHow did we get stuck with the idea that four white guys make a rock band?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NPR music critic Ann Powers uncorked a long, unforgiving treatise on how it doesn\u2019t matter that the Beatles were progressive and loved black music because they were still somehow part of making rock music white and exclusionary: \u201cRock\u2019s defining narrative still stands alongside others that reflect the historic segregation of Anglo-American social spheres.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Beatles and the Rolling Stones wouldn\u2019t play segregated venues and paid tribute to black musicians who inspired them. But Powers wrote, \u201cAs they became rock\u2019s norm, they allowed white fans to enjoy what the late great music writer Greg Tate identified as a pasteurized form of Black culture.\u201d Tate called it \u201ceverything but the burden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They \u201callowed white fans\u201d to eat a Velveeta cheese version of black music. So much of this racialized criticism thrives on a vivid imagination of \u201callowance\u201d and thievery.<\/p>\n<p>Powers writes that black musician Questlove\u2019s documentary on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, compared with the new Beatles documentary, \u201cfelt like a newly uncovered landmark in the recentered cultural world emerging in step with the Movement for Black Lives. The other, wonderfully intimate and revealing as it is, reasserts familiar hierarchies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NPR is reasserting its familiar ideology. This is where many readers would check out after a few hectoring paragraphs. Can\u2019t you just love the Beatles without feeling like you\u2019re reinforcing an \u201cinformally segregated sphere\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>This is not how people listen to music any more than people only limit themselves to one ethnicity of food. The alleged racism here is about definitions: what is rock; what is pop; what is rhythm and blues. This artificially sets up the genre of rock to be a white, male preserve because many of its stars are white men.<\/p>\n<p>But the \u201cfamiliar hierarchy\u201d of white people also loved the Motown sound and embraced its virtuoso black performers and innovators such as Stevie Wonder. You can love rock, jazz, country and classical. You can have them all on your playlist.<\/p>\n<p>Powers wants to pretend we\u2019re still living in 1965. She cited an \u201cinfamous\u201d cover story in Time magazine on \u201cThe Sound of the Sixties\u201d that proclaimed, \u201cThe Beatles made rock\u2019n\u2019roll fun again \u2026 The Beatles also made it all right to be white again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Time\u2019s writer wasn\u2019t spewing racism. Powers left out the next sentence, which suggests whites are culturally inferior, quoting French critic Frank Tenot: \u201cSince the downfall of the Viennese waltz, nothing in popular music, and particularly dance, has known any success unless associated with one or another of the rhythmic discoveries of the Negro.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NPR\u2019s point here is to keep white men perennially confessional about their \u201cprivilege.\u201d Powers started with rock buddies McCartney and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters being \u201cband guys,\u201d then added that term was problematic. \u201cIn 2021 it\u2019s as common for women, trans and nonbinary people to jump into rock\u2019s timestream as it is for men. Yet something continues to infuse the rock mythos with the sweaty-socks scent of conventional, if boyish, masculinity. Whiteness, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s exhausting here is taxpayers still have to fork over their money to NPR to \u201cinfuse the news mythos\u201d with the arrogant odor of cultural guilt-tripping. \u201cPublic radio\u201d is at war with half the \u201cpublic\u201d it supposedly informs. It\u2019s long past time to pull the funding plug.<\/p>\n<p>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.<\/p>\n<p>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\">member<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beatles fans of all ages can flock to Disney Plus for a new documentary called \u201cGet Back\u201d that reassembles footage of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr creating music as the band begins to dissolve. NPR used the occasion for guilt-trip clickbait: \u201cHow did we get stuck with the idea that four &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1153809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1153809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1153809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1153809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1153809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}