Letter to NPR · 8 March 2007

I just read a nice new working paper by UC Irvine’s David Meyer, who researches peace movements (including the current one) in the United States. It got me thinking about responding to John Mayer, the famous musician I hope none of you know, who got a huge piece of Morning Edition air time today on NPR.

Dear NPR,

John Mayer (age 29) claims to speak to, and for, his generation.

In Thursday’s interview, he ridiculed war protest songs and championed a new “political” music about “waiting on the world to change” rather than taking action. Forget old-school music that intends to wake up a listener to “making a change”: Mayer sings to express his helplessness and inability to commit to any particular path of action. 

Well, in the terminology of his generation, John Mayer’s a wuss.

We are the generation who began Teach for America, vitalized the ethical globalization movement that altered the exclusionary course of the WTO, and empowered a new progressivism in the Democratic party by championing Howard Dean. Though we graduated college amid the dot-com boom, more of us opted for the Peace Corps than for Pets.com. We are teachers, hybrid-drivers, and yoga practitioners. We hailed Neil Young's Living With War without a freaking drop of irony (listen free), and are still streaming it and letting it make us cry. And if you think 9-11 killed our spirits, then wait a few years until it’s us at the helms of organizations and running the Congress. 

If Mayer thinks that everyone else his age is spineless, shallow and arrogantly self-centered, it’s not because he’s channeling the zeitgeist. Instead, he’s probably only listening to himself.

Our generation has a term for that too. It's megalomaniac.

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Categories: markets-networks-society , morality , self-deception , social theory , sound

Comment

1. Hey AJ . . .

   There is nothing “middle path” about this one… I like it.

   I’m with you about our generation but sometimes I wonder what is going to happen with the generation after. . . our kids. . .with cellphone in grade school and more knowledge of Britny Spears than Ghandi even though they both have the same hair style now.

   Do you think he might be talking about them?

   Posted by: AP · Mar 9, 12:27 AM · #

2. It’s disappointing and sad to see NPR give him that sort of venue to wax idiotic.
   He’s a talentless, uninformed ass and you need to set him (and NPR), straight. Hell, I’m going to the NPR site right now . . .

   Posted by: RE · Mar 9, 01:12 PM · #

3. Hey AJ,

   NPR has some real misses and I can’t stop thinking about the negative when they ask for money. You and readers might hate me, but I pledge here and now to give them a month’s worth of food allowance if they cut Marketplace, This I Believe, and stopping ripping on one of the few things this government has done to conserve energy (e.g., SAD v. DST).

   Well I’ve gone and done it again. I meant for this to be a positive response to your very positive and inspiring vision for our generation. Thank you, and excuse me!

   Posted by: NG · Mar 12, 11:37 AM · #

4. NG! Hey, I’m right there on this pledge. I felt a bit sad when I realized my vision of our generation’s best self is SOFTCORE NEOLIBERAL — the hybrids, howard dean, and all. I wish we were more radical, but the least we can do as a group is try to pull these centrist institutions back to some kind of political center. (Your own ambitions are better than mine, you fomentor of the second wave of Students for a Democratic Society.)

   I’m all for calling out Marketplace as a social ill. The show’s goal is to teach listeners to (1) reify the market (how does the market “feel” today?) as more real than us, (2) aspire to be Republicans, (3) worship Fed chairmen, and (4) hate inflation (which anyone with a normal income and aspirations toward a mortgage should LIKE!). I don’t want to kill the show, just bring in Michelle Singletary and our prof MZ’s pal Bob Scheer to cohost.

   About TIB, I thank you for giving me space to see its creepy side. Some contributors manage to subvert it nicely, but it ultimately wants to sentimentalize the most mundane aspects of “american life.” It praises what people take for granted, rather than opening questions or lifting up those other “american” traits of individual risk-taking and question-asking. Even the title TIB says “my belief is solid and based on a whole lot of ineffable, wonderful experience that’s MINE, so hear me out.” Basing belief on glorification of one’s past rather than openness to change: conservatism. Doing it collectively on NPR: mundane nationalism?

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 13, 01:03 AM · #

5. Hey! Stop deconstructing This I Believe!

   Posted by: r · Mar 13, 05:13 AM · #

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