France has some idiosyncratic tastes, including most famously their affection for comedian/actor Jerry Lewis.īut, the thing is, the right has to politicize every single thing. Maybe a lot of people in France and Europe like him a little better than most American right-wing political pundits? Maybe a lot of people were excited to see James Taylor. I mean, way before John Kerry brought James Taylor along as a good will emissary, Taylor had announced six concert dates in France in 2015. We’re responding to barbarism from the seventh century with soft rock from the 1970s. The spectacle of the Obama administration’s dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “share a big hug with Paris” as James Taylor - who still exists – crooned “You’ve Got a Friend” is the perfect objective correlative for American decline: The pathetic self-regard of John Kerry and James Taylor’s Baby Boomers meets the cynical, self-serving, going-through-the-motions style of Barack Obama’s Generation X as disenchanted Millennials in parental basements across the fruited plains no doubt injured their thumbs typing “WTF?” It is the substitution of celebrity for power, of sentiment for analysis, of sloppy gesture for clear-headed commitment. Kevin Williamson is particularly abusive, although I agree that Taylor took all the sugar out of “How Sweet It Is.” Mainly, I just find it fascinating that the right hates James Taylor with the heat of a thousand suns. Even at this late date, I don’t feel like breaking that confidence and spilling any dirt. That’s my only connection to their family, although I did get some scoops on the whole family dynamic, at least as it existed in the late 1980’s. I once spent a couple of interesting nights with James Taylor’s daughter (with Carly Simon) who was friends with an old girlfriend of mine.
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