I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN ROCK STARS WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT: Rock Icon Van Morrison Bucks Woke Establishment, Left Goes Nuts.
Predictably, the leftist establishment is enraged at all this, and is out to destroy Morrison for daring to step outside what it has set as the acceptable parameters of public discourse. The ugliest aspect of this has been accusations of anti-Semitism, based on…absolutely nothing. The Los Angeles Times leveled this accusation even in the act of admitting it was baseless: “And about ‘They Own the Media’? While the song doesn’t explicitly name Jewish people as its ‘They,’ it does elevate an anti-Semitic trope that has recently been revived in an even more malicious form by QAnon followers.”
Ah yes, it’s a “dog whistle.” Leftists love those because they enable them to smear conservatives without having to bother with providing any evidence for their accusations. The premier example of this is the claim that Trump incited the January 6 storming of the Capitol, or whatever it really was, even though he told protesters to proceed “peacefully.” His “incitement” was all in “dog whistles,” you see. And likewise, now Van Morrison supposedly is claiming that Jews control the media, even though he never said that, because other people the left hates have said it, and, well, that’s good enough, isn’t it? It’s bad enough in any case that he is exposing the media for what it really is rather than what it claims to be and hopes you think it is.
“The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”