I was accused of being too angry on this web page the other day.
When I thought about it I immediately felt the urge to reread what I had written. “How am I angry?”, “Am I just another one of those angry white males like Fred Durst?” (Don’t worry if you don’t know who Fred Durst is, he thankfully disappeared from the music scene after inciting riots at concerts).
So I conclude that, yes, some of my musings could be construed as angry. But that also means that the underlying themes and messages are being missed or dismissed. Other works where anything but angry, and in some cases just an excuse to see Jessica Alba in a bikini on my web page.
So why am I angry at fat people? Why has Gwen Steffani become my whipping boy for the music industry?
First the fat people; I spend many hours every day being active. Whether that be taking the stairs at work, or lifting heavy weights, I am active, even though most of my work is at a desk. I also eat very well, and while I could eat better (curse you chocolate for your sweet, sweet taste…….Mmmmm choc-co-late!!), I still have a healthy diet. And my diet is such that I was able to gain absolutely no weight, and actually lost weight, when I went from sports-person active to lying-on-couch-all-day-injured-guy.
But this commitment to fitness and health is not the problem I have with fat people. I don’t look down my nose (too much) at them. I chose to be fit and healthy for personal reasons unrelated to the general populus.
The problem I have with fat people is their attitude to me.
They seem to think that I’m lucky. They think that I have good genetics. They think I’m blessed with an excellent metabolism. Oh Thanks! All of that hard work, all that saying “No” to the extra piece of cake, all that research I’ve done on best foods and activity parameters, all apparently count for nothing. And that really cheapens things for me, and anyone else who looks after themselves. It isn’t easy to do; otherwise everyone would be in good shape. Next thing I’ll reach my goal of maintaining 10% bodyfat year-round and someone will say they could do that too if they had the time! Where do these people get off?! Someone puts in the effort and it gets dismissed as lucky or blessed.
My girlfriend summed it up nicely (she’s slim); At a morning tea at her work someone commented on her having a good metabolism and how she was lucky. She pointed at their second piece of chocolate cake and her third carrot stick.
Now its Gwen’s turn. The truth is that Gwen could have been any number of “musicians”, and I use that term loosely, that are currently saturating commercial radio and TV playlists. One Saturday morning I was flicking channels, with our terrific free to air choice, we have three commercial networks, one government funded, one ethnic concern, and one local station. On Saturday mornings most stations have a music video show of some sort, and as I changed channels all I heard/saw was the same bland god-awful song by Gwen.
I was immediately struck by the thought “Where are the good artists being played? Where is their airplay? How will we get the next Soundgarden, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc? Why don’t they play great artists like Ben Folds, Gomez, and The Tea Party?”
And it pissed me off!
As a musician (I like to think I’m good enough for this tag, and will not be taking arguments to counter) I may have higher standards for music, and my tastes may lean in one direction more than others. I concede that people want to listen to Delta Goodrem, and that while her music is saccharine shallow pop, it isn’t bad music. But it is very low down on the list of music I want to listen to. I also find that the host of hip-hop, R&B, and rap artists are nothing more than pop-rap and should be in the same category as boy bands, not Run DMC and Jurassic 5. But the point is that we are flooded with a cardboard cut-out sameness to the music that has left real artists and musicians in the wilderness. They won’t be getting the attention they deserve to become the great artists of our time.
So basically if I come across as angry, can you blame me? I’m white middle class male aged between 18-35, I’m the whipping boy of idealised western society. The only way my frustrations with society can be voiced is via the anonymity of the internet. The amount of times of wanted to have my say on many topics but curtailed my enthusiasm knowing that it would definitely come across as angry. The topics I have harked on, are ones that I thought were pretty universal (maybe not universal, I’m sure that intergalactic races would have figured out that bad music and being overweight were beneath them, and there would definitely not be shows on their equivalent of TV showing some morbidly obese person complaining about how “its so hard to deal with people staring at my enormous arse!”). My place in society is stifled by political correctness. If I say something against someone who happens to be a women, I‘m sexist, something against someone who happens to be of another religion, I’m a bigot, something against someone who happens to be of another ethnicity, I’m a racist, even if the things that I am commenting upon are nothing but truths and not generalised slander.
I recently asked someone to back up the figures they were quoting in regard to ethnic diversity. You see the speaker had used some facts and figures to state an argument that was not taking into account a lot of other factors (he quoted a figure of how many people there were of a certain race in our country and how few were in politics, but didn’t cover how many were contending preselection ballots). So I simply asked him how his figures had been arrived at, considering his omissions. There I was asking an obvious question, and received a five minute diatribe about the importance of equality, without him ever answering my question.
This is the lot of the young white middle class male. One day we too will have an action group, we’ll take back the streets for the majority* that we represent.
No longer will some well meaning idiot be able to lobby to increase taxes on beer and spirits to encourage us to drink that light beer or bottled water (and yes that was a reference to Heathers).
No longer will a comment about gangs roaming the streets raping girls be construed as racism.
No longer will single divorced fathers get the short end from the family courts.
No longer will we have to be taught in schools by a scholastic system designed to favour women.
No longer will boys grow up being pussified by women.
No longer will men be afraid to be men!
So to sum up; If I hate on you, you probably deserve it. If you object to me hating on something, you probably don’t get it.
*We may not represent a majority, but we still represent a bigger proportion of the population than most of the interest groups that lobby parliament.
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