I delivered the following speech on April 23 at the Inquiring Mind Bookstore and Café in Saugerties, New York:
One of my largest intellectual influences is radio. Yes, you heard me right — I said "radio." Right now, I live deep in the Catskills Mountains, in the district where Boy Scouts go on hikes and die. Occasionally a youth from a Boy Scout troop will actually perish 3 miles from my house. Why? Because the real world still exists, and one may asphyxiate in a freak stream accident. My point is that I live in a place more welcoming to bears than to radio. That’s why, during the day, I only receive one station: K104.
K104 is difficult to describe, now that the term "Top 40" is no longer current. Let me explain it this way: if you and I sell out musically, our greatest hope is to get on K104. (It seems strange, but actually I am not too old to sell out musically. Though I am nearly too old to remember to sell out musically.) Do you realize that Lady Gaga sold out? Her initial intention was to be a Tori Amos-type confessional singer, but no one was interested, so she became a sex-drenched party-engine. (A "party-engine" is an engine that drives a party.) Probably the greatest song in the last five years is "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. I will sing it for you now:
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance.
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance.
I want your ugly,
I want your disease;
I want your everything
As long as it’s free.
I want your love;
(Love, love, love)
I want your love.
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Caught in a bad romance;
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Caught in a bad romance.
One reason 366,992,103 viewers have watched "Bad Romance" on YouTube (and I must confess this figure is somewhat dated) — more than the entire population of our nation — is because this song is political. To begin with, those of us who have romantic feelings for Lady Gaga know that these yearnings are "bad." And come to think of it, her romantic feelings towards us, her audience, are even worse. But in fact, all of capitalism is a bad romance. We travel to the mall, and march around tantalized by furious compulsions. As we walk towards a display of calendars on which the appealing faces of young Labrador retrievers are pictured, we hear in our minds:
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
The key word is "caught." It is the apposite word. ["Apposite" means "pertinent, suitable, relevant."] We are not exactly "trapped," nor "held." We are not "imprisoned" in a bad romance. Or even exactly "stuck." We are caught — caught in a trap that we ourselves help build. Capitalism, at this point, convinces consumers to construct traps in which their legs and arms will be ensnared. One of these traps is — wait, I have one here.
[I produce a credit card.]
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