50 Days of R.E.M. # 37 Exhuming McCarthy

'I'm addressing the realpolitik...'

R.E.M were always a highly political concern. You could probably compile an album of songs from their career which were explicitly political even if they remained essentially enigmatic, a consistent feature of the band's output.

Here they at least name their concern. McCarthyism the finger pointing, dencunciations under the banner of patriotism that had been such a historical scourge, most notably in the Fifties under the waves conducted by Senator Joe McCarthy, an ignoble figure of American history,

The song is wonderful, despite it's serious subject matter. Set off by the sound of Michael playing the typewriter, it's a breeze. They're clearly having great fun.Typically their finger is pointed not towards the past, although it maintains an informed sense of it, but at the Reagan exceptionalism of the times they were living though. I was delighted to be able to see the band play the song in Riga round about 2005. What it has to say, sadly, does not go away.