AMONG MY twenty-something peers at The Weekly Standard, I’m thought to be a bit of a premature old fogy. Perhaps it’s my stuffed-shirt sartorial choices, my TV preferences (Turner Classic Movies over the WB), or my taste in music (Duke Ellington over Eminem). What can I say? I’m a cranky old man trapped in a 26-year-old’s body.
Another sign of this is my reluctance to embrace the world of online music file-sharing. First, let me stipulate that I’m no Luddite: I send e-mail and instant messages all the time, shop on Amazon and eBay, and buy my airline tickets online, too. But until recently, two things kept me from participating in the online music phenomenon. First, I missed the original wave of file-sharing madness (the use among college students of the now-defunct program Napster took off just after I graduated). More important, though, I’ve always had qualms about not paying an artist for their music, particularly since I was a music major in college.
