Following Mitt Romney\'s <a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/why-didnt-romney-poll-bounce-vp-pick-112300469.html\">not-quite-mountain-moving</a> selection of Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, the media offered profiles of the VP hopeful for the considerable chunk of the country unfamiliar with the Janesville-born House Budget Committee chairman, describing him as the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/us/politics/family-faith-and-politics-describe-life-of-paul-ryan.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all\">God-fearing, deer-hunting family man</a> more or less everybody expected from the Tea Party champion. To stress that the 42-year-old deficit hawk is Not Your Typical Republican, though, many profiles hit home this detail: He\'s a huge grunge fan. Ryan was reportedly <a href=\"http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/in-the-know/36-news/16425-judy-kurtz\">bumping Filter</a> on his iPod shortly before the House\'s contentious debt-ceiling vote last year, and he cites Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine among his favorite bands. <br /><br />Though the conservative Ryan is aware of the irony of loving an ultra-liberal band like Rage Against the Machine, but that hasn\'t stopped others from pointing it out loudly, none louder than Rage guitarist Tom Morello, who penned a column for <em>Rolling Stone</em> yesterday mocking the politician. "Paul Ryan\'s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades," <a href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-paul-ryan-is-the-embodiment-of-the-machine-our-music-rages-against-20120816?stop_mobi=yes\">Morello wrote</a>. "Ryan claims that he likes Rage\'s sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don\'t care for Paul Ryan\'s sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage. <br /><br /> "I wonder what Ryan\'s favorite Rage song is?" the column continues. "Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of \'Fuck the Police\'? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!" It goes on like that.<br /><br />I can\'t blame Morello for taking such easy shotsthat\'s pretty much his thing, and Ryan was setting himself up for a column like this the minute he revealed his Rage fandombut taunting the vice presidential candidate for listening to Rage sends a mixed message. I doubt that Rage Against the Machine\'s music actually change Ryan\'s worldview, because he isn\'t a 13-year-old, but since Morello has always fathomed his band as a musical infoshop pamphlet of sorts, doesn\'t Ryan deserve some credit for exposing himself to art created outside of his ideological comfort zone? He is, after all, the same politician that critics have accused of being a brainwashed Ayn Rand loyalist. <br /><br />What\'s most dispiriting about Morello\'s column, though, is that it plays into the culture of ridiculing Republicans for listening to music that normal people listen to. That culture hit another low this week when the band Silversun Pickups <a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/story/2012-08-15/silversun-pickups-mitt-romney-song/57080412/1\">chewed out the Romney campaign</a> for using its song "Panic Switch" before a campaign eventnot during the event, mind you, but during the setup for the event. Since Bruce Springsteen famously took the Reagan campaign to task for appropriating his "Born in the U.S.A.," these flair ups have become increasingly common. Tom Petty threatened to sue George W. Bush in 2000 for using "I Won\'t Back Down" as his campaign song, and a veritable Mix FM playlist, including Foo Fighters, Heart, John Mellencamp and Jackson Browne, asked the McCain/Palin campaign to stop using their music in 2008. <br /><br />The Silversun Pickups cease-and-desist, though, feels like the pettiest one yet, an excuse for a band to call out a candidate who was in no way benefiting or profiting from that band\'s music (and apparently had <a href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/politics/music-in-campaigns/index.html\">legal permission</a> to use it). This wasn\'t an example of a candidate piggybacking on a band\'s brand or implying an endorsement. This was people listening to some warm-up music before an event, which is a thing that people often do, regardless of their politics. <br /><br />"We were very close to just letting this go because the irony was too good," the Silversun Pickups gloated in a statement. "While he is inadvertently playing a song that describes his whole campaign, we doubt that \'Panic Switch\' really sends the message he intends." The message that the Silversun Pickups are sending, though, is ugly in its own right.<br /><br />
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