printIs Laura Ingraham always a loud, boorish, boilerplate Republican?
I caught The Ingraham Angle last night, for the first time, and was appalled. First, Ms. Ingraham appeared a little loopy, as though she were, well, high.
The woman was loud, shouting over her guests in an unedifying manner, just because she could; just because she had the microphone. Not once did Ms. Ingraham puncture a Guest’s attempts to speak with meaningful argument, as the great Tucker Carlson does.
Tucker listens, he doesn’t talk over someone unless that someone is babbling. And Tucker, flaws and all (for he’s not pure Old Right, but he’s the best we have), is very sharp. He pierces a Guest’s case with good argument. (And his spontaneous laugh is adorable.)
Ms. Ingraham, on the other hand, is all wrong. Unconservative, unthinking, and yesterday, plain dopey, grinning inanely.
In particular, during the segment about rap lyrics, Ingraham declared, un-conservatively, that she loved all music. A serious conservative might have distinguished music (based on objective elements of composition) from rap.
And a methodical thinker—there are none on Fox News—would understand that while in older, contemporary American music, popular composers were smart enough to write gorgeous lyrics—lyrics are not music.
Put it this way, if the greatest composer ever, Johann Sebastian Bach, set his divine, godly cantatas to the naughty lyrics of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, would I decry these sublime compositions as immoral? Of course not. The music would still be sublime.
Rap is BAD, and not only because of the filthy lyrics. Rap, simply put, is not music.
Conservative emphasis on lyrics is confused. First, separate music from lyrics. Then, make the conservative case that you cannot endorse rap qua music, because it isn’t music. Rap might be street theater, but music it isn’t. Then, as a side issue, add that rap theater and dance is set to filthy grunts and coitus-like movements.
That’s my own traditionalist case against rap. Ms. Ingraham, on the other hand, is a multiculturalist who loves all “music,” including some rap. And being a broadminded broad, she errs in considering rap to be music.