Like a discipline (without the discipline)

Über-commenter Freddie’s frequent interventions on the matter of politics in art and criticism have got me thinking in a self-skeptical vein. Like Ross, I tend to think that there is nothing so dopey in, say, David Edelstein’s (otherwise stellar) film writing as his political potshots, and things like lists of “Best Conservative Movies” always make me cringe. Politics and art, keep ’em apart, I often hear myself saying (barking, really, to passersby). But is this possible? For example, I can’t help wondering if I would find these lyrics (from this song) so deliriously awesome if I weren’t such a stodgy traditionalist:

It’s like a discipline without the discipline of all the discipline.
It’s like a culture without the effort of all the culture.
It’s like a movement without the bother of all of the meaning.
It’s like a discipline without the discipline of all the discipline.
It’s like a fat guy in a t-shirt doin’ all the saying.

Indeed, as I write this, I have to wonder whether my secret ideological investments have led me not just to a slanted aesthetic take, but to an outright misunderstanding of the lyrics. Maybe, here, discipline and effort and the bother of all the meaning are meant to be bad things, and a fat guy in a t-shirt doin’ all the saying is what we’re striving for. But I don’t think so. It is, after all, a fat guy in a t-shirt.