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enn obling accomplishments. (The professor, by the way, was a bachelor.
Presumably his exalted completion of The Closing of the American Mind was
one result of his avoidance of heterosexuality.)
Bloom never cited a single fact that would justify his bizarre coupling
of sexual gratification with creative sterility. What's more, his view of rock
was absurd. Drug lyrics had practically disappeared from rock music over
fifteen years before Bloom wrote his book. Hate had never been a major rock
theme (though it would later surface in a musical form Bloom was unaware
of: rap). And at the time Bloom penned his work, Hitler's image simply had
never appeared in an MTV video. (Two years after Bloom's tome hit the
stands, Hitler finally showed up in one MTV clip. Der Fuhrer materialized in
Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror," a work that urged social
responsibility, and held up Hitler as an icon of evil.)
But Bloom's singling out of a scapegoat satisfied a deep hunger for
someone to blame. His book was wildly successful. Its influence was
everywhere. A December 8, 1987, editorial in The New Republic picked up the
professor's theme. It pointed a prophetic finger at "the prospect of decline
that lurks...in America," lamented that "our cities have...become centers of
barbarism...." and deplored "the exacerbated cultural degradation of man
and environment." The cause of all this? Rock music, with its "numbing
norms... of random drugs, random sex, and random violence."39
The exaggerated--and often false--charges spurred a spate of legal
actions. The FCC revised its policies on "obscenity." The new doctrine was
worded so murkily that almost anything could be deemed obscene. In
response, the public-supported Pacifica radio stations were forced to
suspend their plans to read Allen Ginsberg's classic poem "Howl" on the air.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. A 19-year-old store clerk in
Calloway, Florida, was arrested for selling a rap album that contained the
word "pussy." She was taken to jail, and the store she'd worked for was
driven out of business. Police broke into the San Francisco home of political
rock singer Jello Biafra and arrested him for "selling material harmful to
minors." The material in question was a poster by Academy Award-winning
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