Well, he would have if my father was actually online. At the height of the first round of Internet fever in 1998, I gave my parents (who live on the opposite coast from me) a WebTV box, but they were just utterly mystified; eventually they asked me to turn it off--telephone worked just fine, enough with this newfangled Web and email stuff. (I've tried explaining Pajamas Media to them; the results are something akin to a verbal Mobius loop: much repetition, little knowledge imparted.)

In any case, it's a good thing that my dad, who's in his mid-80s, isn't reading this:

I don’t care much for Bing Crosby’s singing. He was the proto-Elvis; didn’t matter what he sang, he could just turn it on when required. The amount of sincerity and bemusement is absolutely equal in every example, and it all strikes me as artifice. I like his persona; some songs are fine. You can’t write the history of pop music in the 20th century without spending a day on “White Christmas.” But overall: meh. Then again, given the quality of the other male voices in this 1938 playlist, I understand the appeal – to contemporary ears he was much more genuine than the other guys, most of whom seemed like happy manikins with oily hair parted severely in the middle, crooning drivel over a clockwork orchestra.

My dad is the ultimate Bing Crosby fan--until his health slowed his collecting somewhat, he worshiped Crosby much like you or I spent our teens worshipping the Beatles or Zeppelin. He's collected the LPs--and the '78s, and the sheet music, and the books--and played or stored them in his Jurassic proto-home theater.

He's also been interviewed once or twice for Crosby biographies. So he'd regard Lileks' above paragraph as pure heresy. But fortunately, just as all hope is lost, Lileks managed to redeem himself:

Except for Count Basie. The exception to every rule, that man.

I know my dad certainly wouldn't argue with that.