Local musicians were not just passive reproducers of the tradition.

[Y]ou got the downhaul to keep him in place real snug like. Otherwise it just ain't shipshape. Hell, everybody knows that.

The poverty program did not attempt to increase the purchasing power of the poor, but instead to create a vast new establishment (poverticians) to deal with their problems. These poverticians were to gain a considerable vested interest in perpetuating the illusion of a “War on Poverty.”

If this is not idolatry, then it is monarchical hero worship.