Jann Wenner vs. Tokenism

The long-time cultural partisanship of Rolling Stone magazine was confirmed by its founder Jann Wenner’s recent assertions of race and gender bias. To promote his latest memoir, The Masters, Wenner gave an interview to fawning New York Times writer David Marchese, spouting previously hidden prejudices of the media elite. Wenner, 77, retired from actively running Rolling Stone in 2019 and has since been out of the media wars but now seems comfortable enough to admit his biases as a matter of record. That’s why The Masters features Wenner’s confabs with only seven white male rock stars: Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Pete Townshend. It’s old news to RS readers, but he violated the diversity-inclusion-equity (D.I.E.) agenda.

Wenner’s explanation for the exclusion of women became controversial: “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.” He added, “Of black artists . . .  I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.” Those comments got Wenner kicked out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, his second institution, built according to those same snarky criteria. Outraged pundits seem surprised, finding Wenner’s statements sexist and racist. (Meanwhile, they ignore the interview’s egregious shrugging-off of the 2015 rape-hoax scandal that cost Rolling Stone a $1.65 million lawsuit.)

Wenner’s castigators don’t understand RS magazine’s Boys Town legacy or the extent of its continued liberal slant (now overseen by Wenner’s son Gus), evident in the magazine’s narrow endorsement of racial stereotypes (thug and strip-club hip-hop), gender stereotypes (feminist and LGBTQ performers), and blatant Democratic partisanship. Privilege and bigotry routinely go together in corporate media. The fetishization of black outlawry is the new tokenism.

Under Jann Wenner’s editorship, RS maintained a sectarian approach to rock music and rock culture personified by white males. Perfect example: In 1984, it canonized Bruce Springsteen and his Born in the U.S.A. album over Prince’s superior and immensely more popular Purple Rain. There were occasional exceptions, such as its 1976 Best Female Vocalist accolade to Joan Armatrading and the prominent 1977 Dave Marsh review of Donna Summer’s Once Upon a Time. But mostly RS promoted an exclusionary aesthetic. Black performers rarely made its celebrated cover; even Public Enemy during peak popularity was denied front-page treatment.

Wenner hyped the publication as the “rock-and-roll bible,” making its white, rock prejudice so automatic that rival magazines Creem, Spin, The Source, and Right On! filled a niche. The only real competition was MTV, which initially was also segregated — a tendency that goes unacknowledged because media folk notoriously lack self-awareness.

This was apparent when the Times let Wenner ramble on about “my zeitgeist,” an unconscious malapropism derived from Wenner’s particular celebrity-chasing yen. It’s understandable that he started Rolling Stone to get close to the rock stars he idolized — to feed off their fame. That was the main theme of Almost Famous by Wenner acolyte Cameron Crowe.

Wenner’s is the ultimate fanboy folly — being so wound up in hero worship that he over-esteems his idols, revering them as if they were intellectual giants. He peddles The Masters (unfortunately titled like a fraternity of slave owners) as if it were Plato’s Symposium. Although anyone who considers Bono profound is laughably deluded — Bono simply parrots the liberal cant that leftists hold as proof of their moral superiority.

Wenner’s most embarrassing trait is his willingness to accept pop-star drivel when it accords with his own personal satisfaction. He calls it “genius,” as in his half-apology to The Hollywood Reporter: “I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists.” That safe word “genius” allows Wenner to concede the musical gifts of blacks and women while excluding them from the boys’ club of “articulation.” (The Village Voice rock critics similarly reserved the “genius” accolade for white artists — exposing a counterculture fault not far from Joe Biden’s praise of Barack Obama as “clean and articulate.”)

Don’t dismiss Wenner’s interview as “Okay, Boomer” arrogance reasserting the canon. It displays the racism and sexism that always were and that still exist, especially in today’s regime media in which George Floyd–patronization and Christine Blasey Ford–condescension determine the rules by which media elites pretend they’ve conquered racism and sexism and so are entitled to lead the culture.

Palling around with multimillionaire peers (a habit highlighted in the 1985 movie Perfect) amounts to Wenner’s worst journalistic breach, as when he overruled his staffers to positively review his buddies’ work. This smacks of the most arrogant excesses of what once was called the “rock-crit” establishment. Wenner’s prejudices are no worse than anyone else’s, he simply never articulated them before.