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Among the Intellectualoids
Al Gore’s Grammy
Why liberals rule the spoken word category.
Liberals are better than conservatives at the spoken word. Don’t believe it? Just ask the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), who are experts in these matters. On Sunday night, the audio rendition of Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, won a Grammy in the “spoken word” category. An Inconvenient Truth edged spoken-word albums by gay humorist David Sedaris, comedian Steve Martin, actor-activist Sidney Poitier, and faux-news anchorman Stephen Colbert.
Were An Inconvenient Truth’s victory an aberration, then conservatives might have reason to hope for redemption at next year’s award show. But as far as rivalries go, this one is Globetrotters vs. Generals, dogs vs. cats, Germany vs. France. Prior to An Inconvenient Truth’s triumph, Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope, Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee’s With Ossie and Ruby, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Bill Clinton’s My Life, Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and Maya Angelou’s A Song Flung Up to Heaven all garnered Grammy Gold.
As if losing last year’s election weren’t bad enough, An Inconvenient Truth’s Sunday-night victory reminds conservatives that the Grammy for spoken word has been lost to them since the Nixon presidency. Once the domain of aging actors, quirky storytellers, and hot comics, the spoken word Grammy has become the property of liberal politicians and activists reading from their autobiographies and manifestoes. Now that the Grammys prefer politics to poetry, comedy, and all other spoken word categories combined, conservatives seem clueless as to what it takes to read a book at a Grammy-winning level.
What can conservatives do to end decades of humiliation and defeat at the Grammys?
The period of 1968-1970 was the Golden Age of Conservative Spoken Word. Since the NARAS issued the first spoken-word Grammy at the 1959 awards show, the spoken word Grammy has been awarded to just two right-leaning recipients — in 1968 and 1970. During the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, the Grammy went to Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, whose Gallant Men album (one of four he would release) celebrating America’s fighting men actually peaked at #29 on Billboard’s charts. The 1970 winner We Love You, Call Collect, the father-daughter pairing of Art and Diane Linkletter released a few weeks after drug-troubled Diane ended her own life, featured a father’s plea to his countercultural daughter to come home on the A-side and the ill-fated daughter’s haunting response on the flipside. Since then, conservatives have been shut out by the likes of Christopher Reeve, Hillary Clinton, and Jesse Jackson.
What do liberal authors do so well when reading from their books that merits Grammy after Grammy?
“God chose me to write this book,” Al Franken informs in the opening lines of his Grammy-winning Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them — before a booming God-voice interrupts the author. That dry humor might be what’s missing from conservative offerings. Perhaps it is Bill Clinton’s on-again-off-again drawl in My Life or Barack Obama’s affected ebonics when quoting ghetto activists in Dreams from My Father. Maybe it’s just those darn intangibles.
Their winning formula is downright confusing to many Hollywood conservatives. “This has nothing to do with the so-called liberal bias,” suspects conservative Hollywood organizer Andrew Breitbart. “If George W. Bush were to release a spoken-word album detailing all of his administration’s accomplishments in the fight against AIDS in Africa, with Ladysmith Black Mambazo humming in the background, I am sure he would win the spoken-word Grammy next year. Right?”
Whatever qualities make for a great spoken word album, conservatives clearly lack them. What else could possibly explain their four-decade long drought at the Grammys?
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
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stmichrick| 2.10.09 @ 7:58AM
It stopped being about 'the art' a long time ago. Now it is about 'the message.'
The leftist message.
Warren Waldmann| 2.10.09 @ 8:20AM
Winning a Grammy is fine, I suppose. If I were an author I would be much more concerned with selling more books, that's a real test of the quality of your product. If you look at the names of the folks who win in the Marketplace you find, Coulter, Goldberg, Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck, not Gore & Franken.
Rick Josey | 2.10.09 @ 9:04AM
Right on target, Warren. The Liberal intelligentsia is comprised of the geniuses who cannot even balance the federal budget.
www.PatriotHangout.com
Alice Moore| 2.10.09 @ 9:05AM
Silly Rabbits! A Conservative will win a Grammy when an American figure skater wins an Olympic Gold Medal with an all Russian judge panel.
We can take heart. Glenn Beck's "An Inconvenient Book" probably had higher sales than all the Shammy nominees put together.
Thomas| 2.10.09 @ 11:12AM
Who cares. All of these awards groups have proven themselves to be superfluous. What matters is sales and conservative writers absolutely clobber liberal writers in the sales category.
Bill Carson| 2.10.09 @ 11:18AM
I'm actually glad conservatives don't win these stupid "awards." Dang, they're cheap P.O.S.
Rick Josey | 2.10.09 @ 12:21PM
Actually, Gore deserves some awards. Every time he opens his mouth he validates his own thesis about global warming: he speaks, my hot air balloon rises into the clouds.
www.PatriotHangout.com
Dark Eden| 2.10.09 @ 1:15PM
Oh lord. Should we all pretend that these awards aren't a giant sham now? Leftists always win because leftists are the judges and leftists tend to be very narrow minded, bigoted people no matter how much they pat themselves on the back for being open minded.
David Hart | 2.10.09 @ 2:43PM
"Whatever qualities make for a great spoken word album, conservatives clearly lack them. What else could possibly explain their four-decade long drought at the Grammys?"
Thanks for teeing one up for me:
Lack of imagination.
Lack of creativity.
Lack of new ideas.
Lack of critical thinking.
Lack of curiosity.
27% of my (gay) community voted for McCain-in-spite-of-Palin. Thus, the notion that we are inherently more creative or artistic is dashed to the stereotype shredder.
David Hart
http://www.tips-q.com
SickTwistedFreak| 2.10.09 @ 3:10PM
David - you had it all teed up, but you sliced it badly. The simple truth is described in the first few comments.
It's about an agenda, and Hollywierd and anything "artistic" likes the liberal agenda. After all, look at who really tops bestseller lists.
Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris, Berie Goldberg, Sean Hannity, and many more conservatives constantly top the NY Times Bestseller list - in spite of the Times desire to keep them off the #1 spot!!
Truthfully, though - Conservatives could pretty much care less, since it's not about popularity or prestige to a Conservative, it's about the message.
NotAFan| 2.10.09 @ 6:06PM
Mastubatory, self-congratulatory, peer- rather than performance- driven... all of a fashion; never rising to anything above fashion. Nobel, National Book Award, Academy Award, etc.. all are now nothing more than a gaudy, and gauche, brooch upon an oh-so-au-courant ensemble. Or is it dissemble?
Do the accolades of the duped herd, or even the money, make up for being something less than a man?
Denver Todd| 2.10.09 @ 8:42PM
I called my library today to see if I could check out the Art Linkletter item, and it turns out that only three libraries in the world have it, and it is an lp record so not only will they not lend it, but I have no way to play it, so I gave up.
ashok | 2.11.09 @ 1:07AM
My own thought is this should go in the files of "petty things liberals do that make them look really dumb." No one is crying over not winning a Grammy for this lousy category.
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