Op-Ed Thu Dec 17 2009

Jimmy Buffett as an Opiate for the Masses

By Conor McCarthy

As a McCarthy, it is in my blood to hate communism. Don't you dare try to tell me that my blood is red, you commie bastards! My blood looks like God Bless America and nothing else. What? That sentence didn't make sense? Not to a communist it doesn't. (I'm looking at you, Ramsin)

I recently witnessed the communists' secret weapon of mass destruction - a poison that has infected our very culture - and I'm here to expose it for what it is. This is the key to truly subduing the proletariat. Worried about the bourgeois coming to the realization that this life is the ultimate exercise in absurd mediocrity? Take a hint from us capitalists and simply give them a taste of this wonderful, pseudo-Floridian opiate.

You see, a few months ago I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert. The show was in an arena that was in the middle of a concrete jungle - a sort of post industrial wasteland on the south-side of Chicago. You wouldn't know that, though, after you entered in to Buffett's fantasy-land. Fake palm trees, leis, Hawaiian shirts, bamboo-laden bungalows, and even massive screens showing surfers, boats, and beaches engulfed your every sense. I had entered into another dimension. The juxtaposition of the world outside with Buffett's tropical party atmosphere was almost as disturbing as the concert experience itself.

Here were thousands of Midwestern suburbanites gyrating and cheering as Buffett sang songs and told tales of wild parties, mass fornication, and excessive inebriation. Each person waved their hands in the air and sang along as if to say "yes, me too!" to everything Buffett presented before them. Most everyone there was piss drunk or high or both, consuming $10 beers (Buffett's very own "Landshark" brand) or margaritas at college-binge rates. People rolled in after another day at their 9-5 and came here to forget, and they succeeded.

Buffett's entire mantra extols a lifestyle that absolutely no one but him will ever live. None of the people at that concert were going to return to their sailboat after the show. No one was going back to their beach cabana to smoke a bowl and fall asleep in a hammock. They'll return to their suburban homes, go to bed, and go to work hungover the next day. But damn, wasn't that a good party last night? That's the idea that Buffett wants you to very literally buy into, so that he can continue to pelvic-thrust that fantasy in your begging-for-it face.

This is the capitalistic version of brainwashing and propaganda, our own cultural opiate: present before your working masses a life on a pedestal - an ideal fantasy - and then convince them that they're living it by attending massive concerts where Buffett assures us all that we're just pirates chilling out in our reefer boat, munching on cheeseburgers in paradise. Sure you have to work your ass off at a job that eats your soul for 362 days a year, but dude! You're a parrot head! Just crank up "Margaritaville," chill out, and look forward to the next massive Buffett concert, man!

Don't try to defend Buffett as an artist, please. There is no such thing as any kind of transcendence in his music or his performances - which is the point of art, isn't it? - but rather only a consistent steel-drum exhortation to engage in the basest forms of epicurean hedonism. Transcendence leads us to something higher, not back down to mindless self-indulgence. It is the perfect way to subdue your citizens. Work your boring middle class job so that you can hope against hope to afford some kind of four day vacation in Florida where you can have a little taste of what Buffett suggests is your entire purpose. Numb yourself from the meaninglessness of your life by laying down more sacrifices at the altar of your calloused erection.

- What's that? Sure man, I'll take a hit off that bong... What was I talking about? Damn, I love this song.