The dulcet tones of treason

As a Christian in America, I'm used to being persecuted on account of my faith by any number of the nefarious agents of The Left: My employer, local retailers, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, greeting card companies, public utilities, commercial airlines, beauty colleges, manufacturers of feminine hygiene products... the list is truly endless. The sole respite from all this persecution, or so I thought, was my weekly Saturday guitar lesson, which I've been taking for two months now. I am sad to report that liberals have even taken something as innocent and wholesome as music instruction and turned it into another of their politically charged battlegrounds.

The flashpoint for my latest crucible is Hal Leonard's Guitar Method, a deceptively cloaked missal of America-hating that teaches your child to Blame America First one note at a time. In the false orthodoxy of Political Correctness, the American musical idiom of the blues is based on the Black experience of slavery, and Hal Leonard marches in goosestep with the PC Gestapo on this point. The reality of the matter, I informed my teacher, is that the blues is actually rooted in the oppression by northern state elites of white southern Christians, whose spiritual bondage included excessive governmental regulation of industry, and unconscionable interference in the exercise of states' rights in matters like school prayer and educational vouchers. "Black people only later adopted the blues because of their spiritual indentification with these white southerners being oppressed by the ACLU. But as a sop to a key Democratic-voting constituency, Al Sharpton had history rewritten to give them all the credit. It's all true -- I think I read it over at Front Page," I explained.

The offending ditties (This Train, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho) appear as early as book one and are identified as "African-American Spirituals." Initially this didn't strike me as being too odd -- "Less African, more American," I thought to myself, and blithely plucked my way through their notes. But by book two, it became clear I was waist-deep in an all-out propaganda effort by the racial grievance industry: Rock-A-My Soul, Jamaica Farewell, La Bamba... need I go on? I don't know what I find more disgraceful -- the willful refusal to acknowledge the vital current of Judeo-Christian values that animates America's popular music, or The Left's wanton desire to turn Our Nation's budding musicians into a bunch of appeasement-minded Madeline Albrights. Either way: Outrageous!

As hard as this may be to believe, this is hardly the worst of it. For you see, the spectre of homosexuality looms heavily over the whole curriculum. In order to play F#, the book requires you to put your left pinky on the fourth fret of the fourth string. In an act of sheer audacity, the book includes a version of the Star Spangled Banner in such a key that requires this very same effeminate maneuvering. "Can't I just use a capo?" I asked my teacher, not really too sure what capo is and whether they made them just for one string.

No, came back the reply, Proceed. It was clearly time to break out Sister Nancy Beth's November Surprise.

"Well, I just find it unseemly that you would even ask me do that. You know, after what those people have done to Traditional Marriage in this country." I sat back and awaited his response.

"Which people? What are you talking about?" Either my teacher was oblivious to the moral danger in what he was proposing, or he was just playing dumb. I lifted my pinky off the neck of my guitar and briefly waved it in the air. He narrowed his eyes and said, "Oh, I see." He was quiet for a moment. "How about you work on this one instead?" He flipped the page and pointed to De Colores -- mission hardly accomplished.

For those of you who are curious about these matters, Sister Nancy Beth's "axe" is an old Harmony Monterey archtop I bought in a pawn shop a few years ago, solely on the basis of its appearance; fortunately for me, its tone is quite serviceable, according to my teacher. From what I've read on the internets, the month and year it was manufactured is stamped somewhere inside the body, but I've been unable to locate it thus far, even after much determined searching. Another liberal conspiracy? It would hardly be the first. Praise Him!