Reason’s David Weigel has a good

review of Daniel Goldberg’s book Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit. I haven’t read the book and unless I get paid to (or need to for my book), it’s a metaphysical certainty I never will. But I’ve listened to Goldberg (no relation) in a couple long interviews and think he sounds like a crystalized liberal cliché. Weigel confirms my suspicions. He writes:

As “save the Democrats” messages go, Goldberg’s thesis is more fun than a prescription drug plan. And it definitely comes from the gut. But in the end, Dispatches From the Culture Wars fundamentally misunderstands politics, pop culture, and the connections between them. By equating aesthetics with ideology, Goldberg makes a common but serious mistake: He thinks you can tell a person’s politics from the music she listens to.

My favorite bit — which I first heard Goldberg discuss in a radio interview — is the Danny Goldberg’s shock that in 2000 Chuck Schumer has never heard of Eminem. “Eminem. Goldberg can’t believe that “one of New York’s most progressive congressmen” didn’t know about the white hip-hopster.

Now, it may be shocking that someone hadn’t heard of Eminem, but what on earth does it matter that Schumer’s a “progressive”? Moreover maybe Goldberg doesn’t understand that just because young people, particularly young black people, like something doesn’t make it “progressive.” While I’m sure there’s all sorts of uplifting liberal claptrap in rap music, there’s also piles and piles of nastiness in it.

Babyboomer liberals seem incapable of grasping that just because music, drugs, whatever were major themes of their own comfy rebellious phases that these props are not universal constants for “progressive” movements, or movements at all. Get over yourselves already.