From Stuff White People Like:

Even as you read this, white people are telling other white people about the golden age of Hip Hop that they experienced in a suburban high school or through a viewing of The Wackness.

If you are good at concealing laughter and contempt, you should ask a white person about “Real Hip Hop.” They will quickly tell you about how they don�t listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” (aka music that black people actually enjoy), and that they much prefer “Classic Hip Hop.”

“I don’t listen to that commercial stuff. I’m more into the Real Hip Hop, you know? KRS One, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, Wu Tang, you know, The Old School.”

Calling this style of music “old school” is considered an especially apt name since the majority of people who listen to it did so while attending old schools such as Dartmouth, Bard, and Williams College.

Treading carefully, one thing that occurs to me is that this is a deft way to express an affinity for blacks without having to associate with them. I don’t mean this in a “they’re really racist” sort of way, but at the end of the day most of these people have little in common with real live urban black people and further don’t want association with people that ridiculously want to be associated with real live urban black people with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. That latter point is arguably more important. If some white kid from Rhode Island can appreciate it, then obviously there is nothing to appreciate.

It reminds me a bit of Chuck Klosterman’s essay in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, on country music and how the tastemakers have adopted alternative country in a way that they reject popular country music:

“One thing that cracks me up in the Nashville local music scene,” Berman said in response {to a mention about authenticity}, “is this verbal battle between Music Row and alt-country. Alternative country, to me, is just as ridiculously empty in a different way–it’s just that they’re not in power. All these people singing about a life they never knew–it’s really a fetishiation of Depression-era country life. If authenticity is the issue, then there’s something more authentic to me about Wal-Mart country, which speaks to the real needs of the people who listen to it, more than talking about grain whiskey stills.”

Granted, the best alt country songs feel authentic, and that should be enough (and in the idiom of pop music, it usually is). The problem is that guys like Farrar embrace a reality that’s archaic and undesirable; the only listeners who appreciate what they’re expressing are affluent intellectuals who’ve glamorized the alien concept of poverty. The lyrics on a track like “Screen Door” off No Depression have the texture of something old and profound, but they’re not; technically, those lyrics are more modern than anything off Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine. And more important, they’re only viewed to be prodound by people who’ve never had the experience described in the lyrics. Truly depressed people don’t need depressing music. I don’t think I would have had any interest in hearing lines like “Down here, where we’re at / everybody is equally poor” when I was sixteen, sitting in my parents’ basement in rural North Dakota, only vaguely aware that I (and everyone I knew) had no {expletive} money. I probably would have thought Jeff Tweedy was whining. Oddly (or maybe predictably), I love that song today. But that’s because the lyrics no longer apply to the actual condition of my life. I would guess the prototypical Uncle Tupelo fan earns around $52,000 a year and has two VCRs. I would also guess they don’t shop at Berman’s aforementioned Wal-Mart, which is where mainstream country music sells like Pokemon.

This is a slightly different point than I am making, but a true one. As with rap, alternative (and old) country music provides a gateway into lives more interesting than their own. And because the culture is so alien, you don’t have to confront the reality that you don’t really like, want to spend time with, want to be associated with, and/or appear sympathetic to the people involved. Back in the Great Depression, rural folk supported FDR, but these days they back Sarah Palin. It’s easier to romanticize the foreign (the past, as they say, is a whole different country) than those currently standing in the way of your current serenity or standing in opposition to the way that you wish the world to be.