Reading Wenner in Florida

I went to college in 1968.  I was part of that mid to late 60’s becoming aware of the world generation.  My father had given me his wartime crystal radio, and I remember late at night listening to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, all that evolving music.  And I recall the first stirrings of political awareness.  I was entranced by Robert Kennedy and heard of his murder on that crystal radio in one of my late night reading and radio sessions.  I was dumbstruck and heartbroken.   When I went to college later that year, the music fascination blossomed, as it did for so many of that age group and time.  And I found Rolling Stone magazine, which spoke to the emerging generation.  For many, many years I read faithfully and had collected every issue to that date.  At some point work and family responsibilities and a different sensibility about the world made its particular political point of view seem trite and shopworn and I lost interest, not in the music, but in the politics.

Jann Wenner, the founder and longtime publisher of Rolling Stone, wrote a memoir within the last couple of years.  I bought it some time ago and read it last week on one of my regular sojourns to Florida.  While fascinated by all the tidbits of music gossip and up close acquaintance with so many famous musicians and others, I was left with the sourest of tastes.  What an asshole, a preening, hypocritical, self-indulgent, sanctimonious asshole.  A classic liberal/progressive, completely un-self-aware of what an elitist idiot figure he cut.

The book is basically a litany of how Jann spend time hobnobbing with the rich and famous, traveling to all the hot spots, buying homes in those same hot spots, eating in the oh-so-cool eateries, just being there where the really, really important people and things were happening.  While claiming to care about the average person, the working man, which the Democrat party was so devoted to.  He never spent one minute living with or among the average person.  He was an elitist to the core.  He and Barrack Obama and Al Gore really hit it off, all the same narcissistic, I am so smart, personalities.  Who espouse a philosophy and a politics that has nothing to do with how they actually live their lives–on Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket or the Hamptons or Aspen or some tony Caribbean Island.

He was dedicated to getting rich and living the rich, jetsetting life.  For God’s sake this counter-culture icon bought a Gulfstream IV.  While pimping Gore’s climate hysteria.  I managed to keep the vomitus down and finish the book.  I can’t imagine having a much lower opinion of a person than I have of Mr. Wenner.  But he is the perfect exemplar of the progressive mindset, completely hypocritical, completely uncaring of anyone other than themselves and those elite rich, famous people just like them, and endorsing a politics that makes life far worse, not better, for the average person.

You want to explain the rise of Trump and the contempt the elite are held in by most Americans, read this memoir.  It is all right there on every page.  And do so in Florida, where a decent, unflashy Governor has created one of the best public education systems in the country, run budget surpluses, has with Texas led the fastest growing economy in the country, protected the environment, built outstanding infrastructure and raised the standard of living for all Floridians.  He is the anti-Wenner and I wish to God that someone like that could be our political leader.