If you're getting a little tired of Barack and Hillary, check out what Phoenix writers and editors have to say about the unsung merits of the universally loathed. Here are two of my fave items:
Country: France
Hypocrisy is a universally human trait, and nature seems to have endowed the French with more than their fair share of it. But to hold that against the French is, well, unnatural. We don’t expect naturally intense New Yorkers to be laid back, or genetically gracious Southerners to be rude, so why should we expect the know-it-all cheese eaters to be anything but Gallic?
The United States was built on the shoulders of French hypocrisy. It was the blockade of Yorktown by the French fleet that was the key to George Washington’s victory over the British. In fact, King Louis XVI more or less bankrupted his nation to help the American revolutionaries shake off the chains of King George III. While Louis was busy helping our rabble-rousers stick it to the Brits, he was busy suppressing his own homegrown revolutionaries, who — when they got the chance — chopped off Louis’s head. Even a nation of hypocrites has a limit to its tolerance. So next time a tired old fart or an energetic young fogy starts to complain that the US saved the Frogs’ lily pad when we bailed them out during WWII, tell them to relax — and eat some cheese.
To be annoyed by French perversity is an exercise in futility. They do it so well. When France failed to enlist in America’s jihad against terrorism, many — such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh — dismissed them as surrender monkeys. Well, the French do wonderful things with bananas. Parisians were, no doubt, mordantly pleased with themselves as the Bushies slipped on their own banana peels. Pass the flambé.
Every nation needs to come to terms with its own particular forms of national shame. And, all things considered, France has let itself off lightly when it comes its shameful record of collaboration with the Nazis. As one wit has said: France is just like Germany, but with better food. But that’s something. Eat up.
—Peter Kadzis
Rock song: “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart has been a whipping boy for 30 years, derided in the late ’70s for his footloose and fancy-free preening and the parade of blondes and the stomach-pump rumor (google it) and more recently for the Great American Songbooks and his American Idol night. Stewart’s swift and sorry free fall from beloved songsmith (“Maggie May”) and high-spirited carouser with the Faces to sordid sellout was crystallized in this kiss-off from Greil Marcus: “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely.” Lester Bangs simply stated: “Rod Stewart now makes music for housewives.”
The real Rod rancor took root when “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” topped the charts for a month in 1979, giving disgruntled fans an even bigger target. But the song (which holds up better than the Rolling Stones’ equally trendy “Miss You”) is a sharp, streamlined, maddeningly hook-laden tale of a shy couple (“She sits alone waiting for suggestions/He’s so nervous, avoiding all the questions”) who surrender to the rhythm but might last beyond a one-night stand (“They wake at dawn cuz all the birds are singing/Two total strangers but that ain’t what they’re thinking”).
And it must be noted that Stewart was inquiring about the presence of sexiness on behalf of his dance-floor denizens. “It was frightening, stirring up so much love and hate at the same time: most of the public loved it; all the critics hated it,” Stewart said in the liner notes for his 1989 box set Storyteller. “I can understand both positions.”
— Lou Papineau