50. "Stand By Your Man," by Tammy Wynette.
Because conservative editorial wouldn't be conservative editorial without a gratuitous Hillary dis.

49. "Abortion," by Kid Rock.
I guess "Yodelin' In The Valley" didn't qualify.

38. "I Can't Drive 55," by Sammy Hagar.
Their comments: 'A rocker's objection to the nanny state.'
My comments: It's a rocker's objection to driving 55.

37. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," by The Band.
The National Review's Southern strategy. What would Stephin Merritt say?

35. "Who'll Stop the Rain," by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
An anti-war song, which can't be very conservative unless you happen to be a four-star general these days, I guess. Wonder what they think of D. Boon's version?

34. "Godzilla," by Blue Oyster Cult.
Their comments: 'A 1977 classic about a big green monster — and more: "History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men."'
My comments: Uh, like this list?

29. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Iron Maiden.
Their comments: 'A heavy-metal classic inspired by a literary classic. How many other rock songs quote directly from Samuel Taylor Coleridge?'
My comments: Yes, and let's ban all those raps inspired by that multiculti fraud Toni Morrison.

25. "The Battle of Evermore," by Led Zeppelin.
Their comments: 'The lyrics are straight out of Robert Plant's Middle Earth period — there are lines about "ring wraiths" and "magic runes" — but for a song released in 1971, it's hard to miss the Cold War metaphor: "The tyrant's face is red."'
My comments: But maybe he was drinking some of that Communist vodka.

24. "Der Kommissar," by After the Fire.
Conservatives dance! But only to really old Germanic pop songs.

23. "Brick," by Ben Folds Five.
You guys can have this.

20. "Rock the Casbah," by The Clash.
Give em enough rope!

18. "Cult of Personality," by Living Colour.
The only Black group on the list. What would Stephin Merritt say?

16. "Get Over It," by The Eagles.
You can have their entire catalog. Well, except for the opening breakbeat on "Those Shoes".

15. "I Fought the Law," by The Crickets.
Their comments: "The original law-and-order classic".
My comments: Joe Strummer rolls over again.

13. "My City Was Gone," by The Pretenders.
Their comments: 'Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh's radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative's dissatisfaction with rapid change: "I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride."'
My comments: Hmmm. This one's interesting--because I'm sure the primary intended beneficiaries of trickle-down economics, low inflation, down-low protectionism, and sprawl--say, developers, bankers, corporate agriculture, music publishers, and the already stupendously rich would object to the lines that follow: "The farms of Ohio had been replaced by shopping malls/And Muzak filled the air/From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls." I hope Malcolm Foster is getting PAID off that mealy-mouthed junkie. One of only three songs on the list written or sung by a woman.

8. "Bodies," by The Sex Pistols.
This should be the closing song at every conservative gala.

7. "Revolution," by The Beatles.
Their comments: 'Communism isn't even cool: "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow."'
My comments: Yup, and then after writing this, he took up with that longhair Yoko Ono and started singing about Angela Davis, John Sinclair, imagine no religion, and give peace a chance. Filthy Asians.

6. "Gloria," by U2.
Their comments: 'Just because a rock song is about faith doesn't mean that it's conservative. But what about a rock song that's about faith and whose chorus is in Latin? That's beautifully reactionary: "Gloria / In te domine / Gloria / Exultate."'
My comments: It's fun to see people use the word 'reactionary' in such a positive way.

5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," by The Beach Boys.
Their comments: 'Pro-abstinence and pro-marriage: "Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true / Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do / We could be married / And then we'd be happy."'
My comments: I don't hear the abstinence part, unless you think falsetto is inherently an anti-sexual technique. Truly, though, this song is so gay, it's a pro-gay marriage anthem.

4. "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
See #37. Also, it was an anti-Neil "Anti-War or Pro-War, Depending On The Polls" Young song. These days, I'm anti-Neil Young. Jeff's editorial wouldn't be Jeff's editorial if it weren't for a gratuitous Neil Young dis.

3. "Sympathy for the Devil," by The Rolling Stones.
Their comments: 'Don't be misled by the title; this song is "The Screwtape Letters" of rock. The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism — he will try to make you think that "every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints." What's more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism..."'
My comments: They could've admitted they chose this song for the triumphant line: "I shouted out who killed the Kennedys/When after all it was you and me." But this argument is as big a stretch as making "Who'll Stop The Rain?" an anti-Communist tune. It depends on the idea that the song might make you less sympathetic with the devil. Please. Most people I know who have heard this song--completely influenced by the Meters and New Orleans, and probably the best the Stones ever did--have fallen madly in love. That's why conservatives lost the culture war, and why progressives are losing the political war now. Americans want the fuck so badly that the art of seduction is always underrated.

2. "Taxman," by The Beatles.
I give on this one. A great song to listen to, like "Chi Chi Man" was several years ago. Then, oh shit, it means that?

1. "Won't Get Fooled Again," by The Who.
Their comments: "The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all...The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend's ringing guitar, Keith Moon's pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey's wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.
My comments: Disillusioned revolutionaries love very long boring introductions...and Nissan Maximas.

Violence and social position: This might encapsulate the high school experience. In Kaavya Viswanathan's debut novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, the narrator, a well-to-do second-generation Indian American high school senior, cold-bloodedly schemes to get into Harvard—where not coincidentally Viswanathan is currently a sophomore. Opal's plan, triggered by a disastrous campus interview ("Tell me about your best friends" sends her into a panic) and developed by her Cantab-crazed parents, tenuously transforms the brainy, overextended grind into a va-va-voom member of the exclusive Haute Bitchez.

The fact that Opal misconstrues the Harvard dean's advice to "find some balance" as Unleash your inner conspicuous consumer and align yourself with the most hateful people in your class is just one of the novel's troubling spots. But the book, as we all know, has run into problems beyond issues of literary merit. (Indeed, it met with some mystifyingly positive notices, including a New York Times feature on Viswanathan's charmed life.) The Harvard Crimson made a convincing case that several passages in Opal strongly resemble Sloppy Firsts (2001) and Second Helpings (2003), two novels by Megan McCafferty. Subsequent discoveries turned Meg Cabot, Salman Rushdie, and others into instant precursors. And book packager Alloy Entertainment's involvement in Opal's genesis ratcheted up the 'Who wrote what?' level. On April 27 Little, Brown recalled Opal, as if it were an SUV that tends to flip over when making sharp lefts. Its shelf life was under a month.

Forbidden, silenced, the novel now becomes readable, as gripping as a mystery. The bizarre tonal changes suddenly make sense: The whole thing isn't a cloying fantasy of having it all, but the nightmare of answered prayers.

"There is little question that the current immigration debate, though coded and contrived otherwise, is entirely about race. Yet, the framing made popular by immigrants and their advocates is so hostile to Black people and our American experience that it seems impossible for us to stake a claim with this movement. Today's immigrants will find that without Blacks, and a commitment to challenge racism beyond the reach of immigration policy alone, their movement will lose both its moral authority and the practical victory it hopes to achieve.

The language of today's movement directly evokes a painful history. Immigrants who laid claim in the past to this re-imagined American dream colluded with a system of racism that made the hope of health, safety and happiness an empty promise for Black people. Immigrants on the march today threaten to go the way of the Irish, the Italian and the Jewish: they may pay the price of the ticket for American citizenship by yielding to a racial hierarchy that leaves Blacks at the bottom.

Immigrants and their advocates have gained attention by evoking the narrative of hard-working immigrants making good in the land of opportunity - the American Dream redux - with its attendant contradictions and contrivances. With cries that 'immigrants built this country,' a favorite calling card, this burgeoning movement at once revoked the history of slaves and their descendants and obscured important truths about power, migration and social mobility in this country. For my great-grandmother, and generations of Black people in this country before and after her, this lie is worse than silence. It is a critical and strategic omission that adds Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans to the annals of American history while relegating Black people to its shadows.

The narrative of the immigrant as the symbol of hard work that leads to opportunity can mean nothing but alienation for Black people precisely because we know this myth is false. Without our labor - not immigrant labor, but slave labor - in the fields and on the march there would be no market brimming with wealth and economic opportunity, nor a tradition of civil and political rights readily available for appropriation and exploitation.

So, listening to the language of immigrant rights in 2006, a sensible Black person might respond with ambivalence. It is difficult to take the cause seriously, much less call it our own. Immigrant rights advocates have the potential to speak broadly, and Black people more than any other group might champion an extension of human rights denied to those on the margins. But instead we are displaced from this movement by coded messages that celebrate a history of anti-black racism. "

Giving away a half-foot and 30 pounds to Lackey, who is listed at 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, Jason Kendall wrestled Lackey to the ground with Halos catcher Jeff Mathis wrapped around his waist as the benches cleared and piled on in the middle of the diamond.