Artists are Americans, too, You Jackasses

[question everything]

Aug. 25 - Sept. 2, 2004

Lost in OC: No, You Shut Up

Artists are Americans, too, You Jackasses

by Jim Washburn

And furthermore, shut up, all of you who are telling musicians, actors, filmmakers, authors and such to shut up.

(snip)

For those of you not paying attention for the past two million years, let’s bring you up to date: taking stands and speaking out is something artists do. That’s one of the reasons we call what they do "art." Art tells us things we don’t know about ourselves. It connects us. It speaks uneasy truths. It is a catalyst for change and always has been. So it’s a little late in the day to tell Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe to butt out of the abolition issue, or tell Picasso to take the rage out of Guernica, or to demand that Woody Guthrie stop standing up for the downtrodden, or ask Lenny Bruce to stop prodding American mores, or Curtis Mayfield to stop singing about civil rights, or Henry Rollins to stop being so pissed off at everything.

(snip)

Republicans didn’t mind when Britney Spears opened her navel to say, "I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes," or when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fame gave him a leg up in the governor’s race, or that he campaigned with a special-effects crew. Neither did they mind when actor Ronald Reagan became a paid political shill for GE (speaking out against "Marxist" programs such as Medicare and Social Security), or was groomed for public office in a campaign run by behavioral psychologists. When Schwarzenegger speaks at the Republican Convention, or when they do their teary tribute to the Gipper, will Republicans hoist a "Hollywood elite" disclaimer?

Our acceptance of entertainers’ opinions has fluctuated over time. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, anti-war songs were hits on Top 40 radio, and gadflies like Gore Vidal and Orson Welles were frequent guests on the Tonight Show. ABC’s entertainment/variety Dick Cavett Show was a forum for serious dissent from both show folk and politicos. In 1971, it featured a Vietnam War debate between young John Kerry and his eternal swift-boat nemesis John O’Neill... Things now have swung back toward the ’50s. Witness the Dixie Chicks being banned from radio networks; Linda Ronstadt chucked out of a Vegas casino and banned for life for briefly expressing her admiration for an Academy Award-winning filmmaker; or the point Bill Maher has made: with all the poor preparation, intelligence failures and administration negligence surrounding Sept. 11, "how come the only person who lost his job over it was me?"

(snip)

Conservatives claim artists are speaking out as an egotistical lark or a publicity move. Sure, some may be dilettantes pontificating from atop a pile of blow, but most are involved, informed citizens with long records of social action. Springsteen, for example, has shown decades of support for both big-issue causes like Amnesty International’s opposition to torture and for little-known community food banks. Rather than "telling you how to vote," he’s assiduously avoided partisan politics, only previously broaching that subject in the 1980s to set the record straight after George Will and Ronald Reagan erroneously tried to claim him as one of their own. It took George W. Bush’s extremism to bring Springsteen to finally speak out this time. (Check out what he has to say at www.brucespringsteen.net/news/.)

More..

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/51/lost-washburn.php

[Eric J in MN]

1. While I agree with most of that op-ed, the Linda Ronstadt story

turned out to be bogus.

She didn't even know there was a controversy until after she had left the hotel.

And people may have been angry because she didn't perform her greatest hits, rather than because of her dedicating the song "Desperado" to Michael Moore.

[janx]

It seems to me that artists reflect the times rather than

define them--not pop culture icons, but real artists. If you study the arts throughout history, you find that the most persistent and serious ones produce a series of echoes that meld together and give us an unusual and genuine perspective about what was happening at the time.

[indigobusiness]

3. Artists have often broken down barriers

by challenging doctrine and standards.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. The following list of B-Grade Celebrities should just SHUT UP:

Travis Tritt
Clint Black
Charlie (Chickenhawk) Daniels
Loretta Lynn
Hank Williams Jr.
Kid Rockkk
Reba McEntire
Darryl Warmonger Worley
Sara Evans
Brooks and Dunn(or should I say "Crooks and Bum") :)
Tanya Tucker
KKKelsey Grammar
Angie Harmon
Ahhnuld Schwartzenegger
Bruce Willis
Dennis Franz
Dixie Carter
Delta Burke
Heather Locklear
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Mel (Holocaust Denier) Gibson

Let the REAL ARTISTS (Liberals) Speak! They know what's what and you Right Winger's don't know crap from crap!

And please add to this list.

[ixion]

4. I think right-wingnuts are absolutely just as entitled to express their

opinions. What I don't like, is when a obvious double standard is applied.

Basically,

1) No one should be able to tell anyone else to shut up.

2) Just because someone dissents, that does not make them unpatriotic, or a traitor.

3) Just because a theory does not mimic the 'official' story, that does not instantly label it a conspiracy theory.

These seem to be the large sticking points in rendering open and honest debate in our current forums. Conservatives are allowed to sling blatant lies, while liberals who speak the truth are chastised for doing so.

We will never have a open debate as long as these conditions exist. :-(