Where Can We Find American Culture: The Super Bowl or the Streets of Bakersfield?

Hey, you don't know me, but you don't like me,
Say you care less how I feel.
But how many of you that sit and judged me
Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

The Streets of Bakersfield

Homer Joy

Sung by Buck Owens

Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl last night, spewing rap lyrics I couldn't understand. Kendrick's performance was backed by a platoon of well-choreographed dancers--as disciplined as a Russian military unit.

What did Lamar's Super Bowl presentation mean, if anything?

Jon Caramonica, writing for the New York Times, treated Lamar's presentation as if it were as important as a Nobel Prize-winning novel, writing:

But what will always be remembered from this performance is not the musical choices Lamar made, or the aesthetics of his choreography, or the silhouettes of his outfit. What will remain is his grin when he finally begins rapping that song. It was wide, persistent, almost cartoonish in shape. 

The grin of a man having the time of his life at the expense of an enemy.

Caramonica clued me into the meaning of some of Lamar's lyrics; he was cryptically taunting another rapper! Gee, I'm glad I wasted a few minutes of my life watching that drivel.

Was Kendrick Lamar's performance a cultural event? Were there elements of his lyrics and the backup dancers' gyrations that were expressions of American culture? I don't think so.

I know what you're probably thinking. Who cares what some old Mississippi wheezer thinks about rap music? How could a retrograde fossil who lives on a gravel road in the goddamn middle of nowhere understand the profound meaning of Kendrick Lamar's lyrics?

If that's what you're thinking, it's a fair point. People living in Flyover Country have been left behind as mainstream American culture grows more youth-oriented, cynical, urbane, and dismissive of anything that happened last week.

Nevertheless, there are neglected currents of American culture that will endure long after Kendrick Lamar's music and his feud with another rapper are forgotten.

For example, most Americans are unaware of the Okie refugees who fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and settled in California. These people brought a music tradition that blossomed in the Bakersfield region. 

Merle Haggard was the son of Okies; his parents were from Checota, Oklahoma. He became the greatest singer and composer of country music to ever live--greater than Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams.

Buck Owens was born in Sherman, Texas, during the Great Depression and eventually moved to Bakersfield, where he and Haggard created what became known as the Bakersfield Sound.

Other Dust Bowl refugees contributed to the Bakersfield Sound: Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, and the great Wanda Jackson--the Queen of Rockabilly.

Americans enthralled by rap music have probably never heard of the Bakersfield Sound and may despise the people who listen to it as just a bunch of hicks from Flyover Country.

Nevertheless, 50 or 100 years from now, Americans will be listening to the Bakersfield Sound when Kendrick Lamar is just a footnote in the obscure history of rap.

"You don't know me, but you don't like me."
Image credit: WPA

 

Senator Chuck Schumer Wants to Extend Moratorium on Student-Loan Payments: Is that a Good Idea?

Quite a few country songs are about guys who made a big mistake when they were young and went to prison.

Merle Haggard tells a story about a man who “turned 21 in prison, doin’ life without parole.” George Jones eulogizes a wretch who spent eighteen years in the slammer “and still has life to go.” And Porter Wagner sings about a guy rotting in a cell because he stabbed his wife and her lover in a fit of rage.

Heck, even Wanda Jackson, the queen of rockabilly, wails out a song about a riot in cell block number 9.

Student-loan debtors can empathize with these prison songs. Like the people Merle, George, Porter, and Wanda sang about, they made a big mistake when they were young and spent their adult lives dealing with the consequences.

Indeed, that is the great tragedy of the student-loan crisis. Young people borrow tons of money to pay for their college education when they are clueless about what they want to do with their lives.

Then they graduate from college (or drop out) and can’t pay back their loans. Interest and penalties accrue, causing their original loan balances to double or triple, and ultimately, they realize they’re facing a lifetime of debt, which they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.

College debtors got a break when the COVID pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. The Department of Education allowed them to skip their monthly loan payments without penalty and without interest accruing on their loans. But that reprieve comes to an end next month.

Senator Chuck Schumer and other progressive congressional leaders want President Biden to extend the student-debt moratorium yet again.

I think that’s a mistake, which will only prolong the misery.

No, Congress should face the fact that the federal student loan program is a catastrophe. Our national legislators need to amend the Bankruptcy Code to allow distressed student borrowers to discharge their student-loan debt in bankruptcy.

Also, the feds need to put severe pressure on the colleges and universities to lower their tuition prices.

Finally, we need to shut down the for-profit college sector and shut down dodgy graduate programs—the third-rate law degrees and vacuous MBAs.

Otherwise, we are just enlarging an enormous debtors prison that now holds more than 45 million inmates.

Wanda Jackson: "There's a riot goin' on."