Most people I talk to tell me that they like all styles of music. Sometimes they will admit to a particular style they dislike, especially Country or Heavy Metal. Such statements have always amused me, because I know these people are fooling themselves—not that I shatter their illusions. My experience with people’s actions rather than their words is that they listen almost exclusively to one kind of music and they put up with a lot of other things.

The music you like is the stuff you put on when you are at home when no one else is around to please or impress. If you really will put on Madama Butterfly today, Judas Priest tomorrow, Russian Balalaika quartets the next, and traditional Biwa accompanied Japanese folk tales the last, then you really do like all styles of music. But if you don’t, then you don’t.

I have always thought—opposed to the pretenders around me—that I really did like all styles of music. That, however, is just as much a delusion as that of others who are desperately hooked on a single style of music. In general, I do have eclectic taste. I will listen to Gregorian Chants, followed by Black Flag, followed by Merle Haggard, followed by John Coltrane. I even like good Hip Hop, but given the overwhelming quantity of dreck, I am most likely to settle for very old stuff like Gil Scott-Heron, rather than bother to learn the modern artists, 95% of whom are simply not interesting. But that’s the thing: I like all styles of western music. I have little patience for most non-western music. If it uses the western twelve tone octave, I’m fine. Anything else, I don’t get. I can tell it is music; I can appreciate the rhythms; but the melodies and harmonies are maddening.

So no, I don’t like all styles of music. And I’m fine with that.

As you probably know, I am very fond of The Nation editor Chris Hayes (even if I am less and less pleased with the magazine itself). Thus, I was excited to check out his new MSNBC show. He is an amazing man. He seems to know everything that is going on in politics, even little obscure things. When I listen to Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Donnell, I am impressed with them, but they rarely know anything I don’t. That was not the case a few times during last weekend’s Up with Chris Hayes. Here he is destroying James Poulos, who is apparently pushing the same thoroughly discredited Republican talking point that Fannie May and Freddie Mac caused the housing bubble.[1]:

Another great thing about the show is that it is unabashedly liberal. Unlike pretty much all other political shows where a panel will consist of three conservatives and one centrist Democrat (or rarely an actual liberal), this show has three liberals and one conservative. Who would have thought? Of course, everyone will say that Up is a liberal show, but never say that This Week (to name one show at random) is conservative. We’ll see how long Up with Chris Hayes stays on the air in its current form.

Check out the show online. Currently it provides whole hours without commercial interuption.

[1] Poulos seems like a smart guy, and yet he is a conservative. I still don’t understand how anyone other than the super rich (and not even them) can be conservative. All I can think is that they misunderstand what their true interests are because everyone tends to do better under Democratic administrations. Undoubtedly, it has a lot to do with Upton Sinclair’s idea, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”