October 28, 2014

Why Do Republicans Hate the Beatles?

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Over at the Facebook Data Science blog, Winter Mason shows us how personal likes and dislikes line up with political ideology. Democrats like Maya Angelou, The Color Purple, and The Colbert Report. Republicans like Ben Carson, Atlas Shrugged, and Duck Dynasty. It’s all good fun, though I’m a little mystified about why the Empire State Building is such a Democratic-leaning tourist destination. Maybe Republicans just dislike anything related to New York City.

But it’s music that I want some help on. I get that country tends to be right-leaning and Springsteen is left-leaning. But what’s up with the Beatles being so distinctively associated with liberals? It’s no secret that I know squat about music, so help me out here. No snark. I thought the Beatles had long since ascended into a sort of free-floating state of pop elder statehood where they were beloved of all baby boomers equally—and pretty much everyone else too. What do I not know that accounts for continuing Republican antipathy toward the moptops?

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