    21

    enn obling accomplishments. (The professor, by the way, was a bachelor.

    Presumably his exalted completion of The Closing of the American Mind was

    one result of his avoidance of heterosexuality.)

    Bloom never cited a single fact that would justify his bizarre coupling

    of sexual gratification with creative sterility.  What's more, his view of rock

    was absurd.  Drug lyrics had practically disappeared from rock music over

    fifteen years before Bloom wrote his book.  Hate had never been a major rock

    theme (though it would later surface in a musical form Bloom was unaware

    of: rap).  And at the time Bloom penned his work, Hitler's image simply had

    never appeared in an MTV video.  (Two years after Bloom's tome hit the

    stands, Hitler finally showed up in one MTV clip.  Der Fuhrer materialized in

    Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror," a work that urged social

    responsibility, and held up Hitler as an icon of evil.)

    But Bloom's singling out of a scapegoat satisfied a deep hunger for

    someone to blame.  His book was wildly successful.  Its influence was

    everywhere.  A December 8, 1987, editorial in The New Republic picked up the

    professor's theme.  It pointed a prophetic finger at "the prospect of decline

    that lurks...in America," lamented that "our cities have...become centers of

    barbarism...." and deplored "the exacerbated cultural degradation of man

    and environment."  The cause of all this?  Rock music, with its "numbing

    norms... of random drugs, random sex, and random violence."39

    The exaggerated--and often false--charges spurred a spate of legal

    actions.  The FCC revised its policies on "obscenity."  The new doctrine was

    worded so murkily that almost anything could be deemed obscene. In

    response, the public-supported Pacifica radio stations were forced to

    suspend their plans to read Allen Ginsberg's classic poem "Howl" on the air.

    But that was just the tip of the iceberg.  A 19-year-old store clerk in

    Calloway, Florida, was arrested for selling a rap album that contained the

    word "pussy."  She was taken to jail, and the store she'd worked for was

    driven out of business.  Police broke into the San Francisco home of political

    rock singer Jello Biafra and arrested him for "selling material harmful to

    minors."  The material in question was a poster by Academy Award-winning

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