Gutless?! Moi? Au Contraire!!

    Welcome back, everyone! I hope you enjoyed your summer vacations, especially during those dog days of August. I know I did. It's always good to get away and/or just do nothing for a few weeks. A few weeks?! You've been gone over a month! Well, my little friend, I figured if the Europeans can take a month off and go to the Riviera, I can, um...get away. I mean, Summer officially ends tonight (September 22) and that beautiful time of year here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Autumn, begins tomorrow (the autumnal equinox)! But, and there's always a but. For continuity's sake, this is probably the piece I should have written/published before the one about Martin Luther King, but I wanted to make sure I got that in on the anniversary of his speech. That was important to me. And then there was the 9-11 piece that our Editor-at-Large, Charles Magee III wanted to reprint. So this may seem a little out of order...but what do you people care, you aren't paying to read this stuff, right? And we're off...

    Well, a funny thing happened on the way back to normalcy and returning to the real world, as it were. An old friend from Boston sent me an e-mail in response to a piece I wrote about a family I met in Tyler State Park. This guy starts giving me shit about how gutless and soft I've become! He writes, and I quote, "You used to pontificate about sports, politics, religion and anything else that popped into that obnoxious head of yours and you didn't care who you pissed off. And now you're writing about lost families in a park and how you bond with them! What the f*#@ happened to you?" Let me repeat - I haven't seen or talked to this guy in 30-35 years. I don't even know how he got the name of my website! Don't get me wrong, I don't mind this kind of thing; I actually enjoy it. I mean, I love it when people e-mail me or when Facebook people comment. I'm shy, but I've got a little bit of an ego! But this did catch me off guard. You're an idiot! 

    Anyway, I took the bait because I actually am an idiot, and I called him. After some pleasantries about how our lives had turned out, what we were doing now, and the usual questions about mutual friends, etc., I tried, as honestly as I could, to answer his attack/question. Sadly, the best thing I could come up with was a somewhat half-joking, half-assed remark about the possibility of maturing after all these years and not wanting to lose the few friends I have left by being, oh what's the word I'm looking for...ah, yes...an ass-hole. Now, I actually think those are two pretty good reasons for not being over-the-top obnoxious when it comes to writing opinion pieces like this...but I get where he’s coming from. And in my defense, I told him that if he goes back through my website I think he'd find a number of pieces that he would consider worthy of my youth. We'll see. In the end, we finished on a good note, as we always had. I told him I miss Boston and the friends that I made up there. It's why I annoy you people with telephone calls all the time! Besides, I love to hear my name pronounced, "Peetah!"

    All that said, I thought long and hard about what we had talked about. In my defense, I'd like to think that I "rant" on more than one occasion about serious and even divisive topics, and not all of these essays that you people are so very kind to read and even write or comment on, are pieces about befriending families in a park, lamentations about lost friends or family members, or weather updates from North Pole, Alaska! Uh-oh, you're not going all Pat Buchanan/nuclear on us, are you Boss? No Sancho, the heavens forfend. But I am fascinated with everything going on in the world and I do find myself, at times, hesitant to pull the trigger, as it were, on something that might cause someone to be overly hurt, because that is never my intention. "I sense a big fat "BUT" coming on, Boss!" But, because time is always our enemy, I would hate to look back and say, "What if?" The great Buddha knows I've done that one or two, too many times in this life. "We're gettin' edgier, aren't we Boss!" We just might, Sancho. We just might. But not today. This is a Welcome Back, piece. Baby steps, my friend...baby steps. Damn...

    Which brings us to Jann Wenner. For the uninitiated, Jann Wenner co-founded the music, politics, and entertainment magazine Rolling Stone way back in 1967, and served as its editorial director until 2019. He then co-created the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's not a bad one-two punch for any lifetime. You wanna quibble that they stuck it in Cleveland, Ohio of all places? Okay. I get that. But just remember, Cleveland is the home of the very underrated Michael Stanley Band...so there's that. Anyway, the point is that Wenner, and his publication, have been an integral part of the modern music scene, and in a much smaller way the political scene, since 1967. Not that it has all been without potholes. 

    For me, the most famous pothole came in November of 2014 when a Rolling Stone writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, claimed that a University of Virginia student named "Jackie" had been viciously raped by a group of male students at a fraternity party as some sort of sick ritual. The story was intended as a representative story...an example of the kind of routine sexual violence faced by young women on college campuses all over the land.

    The story went viral, and everyone went batshit; as they should have, except for one, tiny problem. "Jackie" made it up. The person she accused did not exist and she impersonated "him" in texts to her friends.  If Rolling Stone and Jann Wenner had followed simple journalistic protocols, they would have figured this out in a heartbeat. But no...Wenner and Rolling Stone were pushing an agenda; the facts be damned. To this day, Wenner says that "the rest of the story was bulletproof." I don't know what he even means by that, but it sounds like "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play". So, it's not like Rolling Stone is the bastion of journalistic integrity. But let's get to the present.

    Recently, Wenner wrote a book titled, The Masters. In it he interviews numerous legends of Rock-n-Roll...from Dylan and Jagger, to Bono and Springsteen. And it seems he used old interviews and first person stories of legends now dead. While I haven't read the book yet, it seems Wenner is trying to figure how these great artists attained mastery of their craft. It's kind of like some dope such as yours truly being able to interview a collection of the greatest authors of all time, as well as using as many first person sources as possible for the dead ones, in the hopes of finding out their literary secrets. Or something like that. A noble endeavor, right? Absolutely! But...and there's always a but. 

    It seems that every one of Wenner's subjects is a white male. That's right. Every...Single...One. Really? No Joni Mitchell. No Stevie Nicks. No Carole King or Whitney Houston. No Aretha Franklin or Janis Joplin. Hell, not even a nod to Alanis Morissette or Cindi Lauper! No James Brown. No Jimi Hendrix. No Michael Jackson. No Prince. Are you f***king kidding me? And that last sentence is pretty much what everyone else said. When a New York Times reporter started grilling him on these "oversights," Wenner responded that the Black and Female artists were not part of his "zeitgeist" for the book. I hate that word, but he used it. But what really sent people heading for their torches was what followed; "Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level," he told the Times reporter. "The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock." Of Black artists..."I mean, they just didn't articulate at that level." Let the public flogging commence.

    Well, now. I could be a prick here and opine about people of a certain political or philosophical bent eating one of their own, but that's not really the point. I mean, no one is ever going to accuse Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone of being William F. Buckley and National Review. He and his magazine are full-fledged members of the cultural Left. And that's fine. He's also admitted that this wasn't an oversight. He didn't just "forget" about these great artists. But we do have a little conundrum to deal with. 

    Almost immediately, Wenner was dismissed from the board of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his public apologies and metaphorical lying prostrate in the middle of the temple commenced. And who knows how many other professional losses he will endure. He's now being accused by some of being a long-time bigot for the alleged sin of having hardly any women or black artists on the cover of the magazine over the years. That is patently false. I've gone through all of them and there are plenty of Black and Female artists. There are also rap artists, movie stars (male and female, Black and White) and even more than a few politicians. If Wenner's a racist, he hides it well. 

    No, the conundrum is...say it with me now...Freedom of Speech. Did Wenner think this through? Maybe/Maybe Not. Did he think he was immune to the backlash that he HAD to know was coming? Probably. I'm not a fan of Wenner. I mean, I read my share of Rolling Stone issues when I was younger. There was a lot of crap in every issue, but I'm a music guy and I loved the interviews and those Top 10 Lists of guitarists, drummers, and especially the keyboard players. At no time did I think I was reading a tract put out by David Duke and the Klan. 

    Look, I think Wenner's reasoning for dismissing Black and Female artists from his book was absurd and galactically stupid. I have a tough time believing that these artists could not articulate themselves to Wenner's satisfaction with regard to their oeuvre. However, Jann Wenner has every right to write a book about music by whatever parameters he sees fit. Does he have to live with the consequences of those parameters and how he described his thought process? Absolutely. But this is where we are now. If one doesn't walk and think in lock-step with the cultural gatekeepers, whoever they may be, then one is metaphorically annihilated. Jann Wenner is writing some emotional checks right now. I fear the cost may be much too high. 

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com