First, let’s give proper credit to James Parker, who is a contributing editor to The Atlantic and a white man who hates prog rock: he manages to avoid, in his review of David Weigel’s book The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock, the adjective “pretentious.” Kudos. Props. Cheers. Scattered applause.

The rest of his article—that is, the entire article—is appalling, bad, and cranky (the abc’s of lousy articles), starting with the title—“The Whitest Music Ever”—and taken up a few notches with the subtitle: “Prog rock was audacious, innovative—and awful.” Perhaps Parker was trying to top Kyle Smith’s embarrassing excursion into prog criticism. If so, he succeeds in some ways, if only because he doesn’t even trying to construct an argument, provide much (if any) context or contrast, or observe any basic journalistic rules governing facts, truth, and other boring minutia. It’s…