NATIONAL REVIEW’S BOOMER SOONER BLOWS IT: Go read Don Surber’s latest on Substack. It’s a devastating comparison of Oliver Anthony – he of the Appalachian Scots-Irish and sudden smash hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond” – and National Review Executive Editor Mark Antonio Wright.
Anthony’s No BS ballad about the current state of American leadership captures the frustration and desperation of a generation of Appalachian men who have seen their economic way of life taken away from them, jobs shipped to China and industry outlawed by distant bureaucrats determined to shove America into a Green Energy Hell.
Wright lectures Anthony about upholding the traditional masculine virtues in the workplace and all but accuses him of being a lazy welfare bum, which, of course, totally misses the point of the song. At first I was puzzled why an NR editor would be so mindless about one of the most vivid illustrations of the Left’s Welfare State.
But then Surber notes that Wright is from Oklahoma. “Bet he’s an OU graduate,” I thought to myself. A quick check of Wright’s bio confirmed that initial intuition. Wright is indeed a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, that seething cauldron of liberal enlightenment that features itself adrift in the sea of Red Neck Ignorance that is the Sooner State.
Somewhere, Bill Buckley continues mourning the death of a once-great magazine.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I grew up in Oklahoma, but I had the good sense to attend The Oklahoma State University (BS in 72) instead of that liberal sinkhole in Norman.