Don Surber (substack.com) Oliver Anthony and the sorry state of NR
"When Hitler turned on Stalin, Guthrie turned on Hitler. To cover up his past support, he slapped a label on his guitar, “This machine kills fascists.” He was as phony then as National Review is now." (But Springsteen still admires Woody.)
"I was not going to write about Oliver Anthony’s brilliant song, Rich Men North of Richmond, because I have nothing worthy to add. The video puts all other commentary to shame. North of Richmond refers to the federal government, which is too large, too powerful and too uncaring.
" But Mark Antonio Wright, executive editor of the Never Trump National Review, butted in with a Learn-to-Code column attacking Anthony for daring to complain about DC’s treatment of the working class. It lectured Anthony to be more like Woody Guthrie, the Nazi apologist and communist." . . .
. . ."Those jobs disappeared to Red China and other sweatshop nations. National Review repeatedly mocks factory workers by claiming this was the free market. The antebellum South could have made the same argument about its slavery, couldn’t it?
"The irony is that while a guy in the suit says learn to code, those coding jobs have gone overseas as well. And miners have plenty of the skills that Wright waxed about poetically, but the mines are closing and the company towns that are not far from where the singer lives have turned into opioid dens.
"From North of Richmond, Wright demands a grand economic plan from Anthony. Wright wrote, “I wish Oliver Anthony the best, and I’ll give his next single a listen, but he should consider singing about what makes America a great land — a land of opportunity, not of guaranteed success.”
"Ah, there is another irony. Wright calls for celebrating what makes America great while working for a magazine that has mocked Make America Great Again for 8 years, beginning with Trump’s announcement for the presidency, when its news story called him a witless ape. It celebrated the end of his first term with a news story, “Witless Ape Rides Helicopter.” . . .
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