Wider Angle: The First iPod

What, exactly, is on the First iPod? In an era of celebrity playlists - Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, recently posted his on the iTunes online music store - what does the presidential selection of downloaded songs tell us about Mr. Bush?
First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. ("Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today.")

The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone in charge of music coverage, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week.

[...]

As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."

Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection."

Update: To forestall more email on this subject: please read the quotation from the article reproduced above, with special attention to the boldfaced section. While the article states that Bush has a staffer load his iPod from the iTunes Music Store, it also says that he has his friend download music to it from his personal collection. The former, obviously, is not particularly radical, but the latter is exactly the kind of behavior the music industry characterizes as theft.
Update 2: Farhad Manjoo points us to this excerpt from Byron York's new book in which Karl Rove says of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11:
"'I plead guilty to violating the copyright laws of the United States by watching a bootleg DVD,' Rove answered with a grin. 'I refuse to enrich [Moore],' he added, giving the clear impression that he had a rather low opinion of the filmmaker."