Favorite books of 2002 - includes poems

Progressive, The, Jan, 2003 by Kate Clinton, Ruth Conniff, Anne-Marie Cusac, Elizabeth DiNovella, Andrea Lewis, Fred McKissack, Jr., John Nichols, Matthew Rothschild

"I was fascinated by this essay, for two reasons," Hitchens writes. "First, it admired Orwell mainly for his shortcomings (citing with approval his ill-natured remarks on homosexuals, for instance, though not his occasional lapses about Jews). Second, it was incapable of quoting him accurately, let alone fairly. Just like Raymond Williams, Podhoretz was not above taking a remark made by Orwell in the second person and rendering it in the first person."

Podhoretz plops into Orwell's mouth a quote about dropping two bombs on the mother of your enemy if he drops a bomb on your mother's home. (Note: Why is it when street thugs take this approach to problem solving we call it barbarism, but when nations do it we refer to it as realpolitik?)

"I happened to be the person chosen by the editors of the magazine to reply," Hitchens writes, "and I observed of this distortion that it would be fun to read Podhoretz's review of Swift's Modest Proposal, replete no doubt with rich approval of the stewing of Irish babies."

Damn, that's so funny it's Orwellian.

Fred McKissack Jr. is Culture Editor of The Progressive.

John Nichols

With the dismal result of November's election, expect a stack of books to be penned about the disconnect between Democrats and the white working class. But none will say as much of consequence as a book that--in describing the circumstances surrounding the recording of Billy Cox's New Deal-era song "The Democratic Donkey's in His Stall Again," and a thousand other politically relevant country music tracks--offers more insight than a shelf of standard political tomes.

Music historian Bill C. Malone's Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class (University of Illinois) is so rich in detail and analysis that it ought to be required reading for anyone who feigns an interest in those vast stretches of America known as "fly-over country." This book digs deep into issues of race, class, and political reaction as they are raised and illuminated by country music. Pick an issue and Malone will find a country song that addressed it: From the Sons of the Pioneers' "Old Man Atom," a Cold War-era call for international cooperation, to Cactus Pryor's "Point of Order," a spoof of Joe McCarthy recorded in the days when most artists were afraid to take on the red-baiting Senator.

There is nothing sentimental about Malone's examination of country music and its role in the national discourse; he details the ugly racism of songs recorded for the old Reb-Time label, as well as the creepy nationalism of Vietnam-era songs like "The Battle Hymn of Lt. William Calley." But he also recognizes the nuances in Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee," and he points readers toward a rich vein of working class populism--some rough-hewn, some remarkably sophisticated--in the country section.

"For every Garth Brooks, there are a thousand country musicians who perform in local bars, taverns, and American Legion halls and who have never been able to give up their day jobs," writes Malone. "These are the musicians whose middle class dreams are tempered by working class realities."