This may be the funniest best of list I’ve ever seen. Contemporary artists from diverse pop genres are pumping out material critical of Bush and his administration. Neil Young (Let’s Impeach the President), Pearl Jam (World Wide Suicide), Pink (Dear Mr. President), Dixie Chicks (Not Ready to Make Nice), Green Day (American Idiot), Bruce Springsteen (We Shall Overcome), and that’s just the superstars. These progressive artists are producing new work with specific targets in public life. Now right wing rockers are feeling left out, so they have compiled their own compendium of headbangers that they believe places them in with the in crowd. It’s such a pathetic exercise in desperation that it transcends satire.

Here are a few choice examples:

• 1) “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who
• 3) “Sympathy for the Devil,” by The Rolling Stones
• 13) “My City Was Gone,” by The Pretenders
• 20) “Rock the Casbah,” by The Clash
• 35) “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

These are just a few of the more blatantly liberal, anti-establishment songs and/or artists that the right is misinterpreting in their pitiful yearning to play with the cool kids. Many of these artists would laugh themselves into convulsions if they found their music on this list, particularly artists like The Clash or The Sex Pistols who had outright disdain for traditional authority.

It should be noted that the majority of the list was released between 15 and 40 years ago. Only four were recorded this century. None of them were overtly pro-conservative politically, but rather had a theme (or just a single line) that expressed what conservatives view as their exclusive values. I’m not sure that the Beach Boys lyric anticipating a happy future married to a loved one could be considered conservative. The last I heard, liberals like to marry their lovers too.

Contrast those tenuous ties with the unequivocal revulsion in the brand new work by progressive artists that is directed squarely at our current neocon political leaders. There really is no comparison. This compilation just demonstrates the lengths to which these sad and envious losers will go to convince themselves that they’re popular.