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A couple of months ago, my wife and I went to a concert at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. The concert featured Taj Mahal (one of my favs) and Susan Tedeschi (one of my wife’s favs). Great show. Very entertaining. It’s not easy to tap your feet in a smokeless sit-down venue, but hey, at least it keeps the kids who forgot to wear belts with their oversized pants from setting fires in the middle of the floor, right?
Anyway, near the end of Susan Tedeschi’s set, she plays a very nice lyrical piece about nature and love-and-such (mostly about love-and-such). After she completes the song, I guess the cannabis starts to kick in when she starts a Samuel Beckett stream-of-consciousness persiflage: “Y’know, that song makes me think about politics.” You could almost hear a collective “Here we go” rumble through the audience.
She goes off on a tangent with feigned light-heartedness about how she used to live in Massachusetts and now she lives in Florida and in Florida she’s written letters to Jeb Bush because he personally wants to concrete over the wetlands and let big developers have their way and that it’s really bad to want to concrete over everything because when you do that you poison the rivers and then you poison the fish and then you poison the people and then we all get cancer and then we die (My 2½-year-old boy threw out an observation of equal profundity the other day when he said “Mimi’s house is outside!”).
Now there wasn’t ripping down of posters or outright boos and hisses. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to shout, “THIS IS BUSH COUNTRY, MA’AM!” But like most Fort Worthans, I’m too polite. There was, however, enough groaning to vibrate the angels in the oculus. Enough to make Susan a little nervous.
If you’re one of those folks who repeats the mantra, “Well, she was just practicing her right to free speech,” I would like to address that right here, right now, in my own free speech forum.
When Don Henley performed in Orange County, Calif. in late July, he declared his alliance with fabricator Michael Moore and pop soccer mom Linda Ronstadt. He was subsequently booed. Henley decided to add to the inanity of the moment by declaring: “We used to be able to have civil debate in this country. Not anymore."
Do Henley, Ronstadt, Michael Stipe, Ms. Dixie Chick, et al, not understand that it takes TWO (2) to have a debate? When you get up on stage and make a contrarian, incendiary, derogatory, divisive, politically-charged remark, do you not realize that you are, in effect, debating with the audience? Do you not realize that an audience can be made up of individuals from all over the political spectrum, from Patrick Buchanan to Al Sharpton? From V. I. Lenin to Adolph P. Hitler? And that there’s a whole contingency of people who have little or no political tendencies at all—people who happen to like the music you play and who are probably standing in awe and confusion when posters are being ripped off of walls and gestures being flung. I’m sure in Las Vegas there were many who said, “I thought we came here to hear Linda Ronstadt sing.”
I’ve talked before about my friend Cletus (His name was changed to protect all involved) who worked with me in the Communications group of a large Dallas company. Our group regularly held meetings that were 45 minutes or so and involved 10, sometimes 12, people. Once in awhile, in the middle of the meeting, Cletus would pop off a derogatory remark about Dick Cheney and Halliburton. He didn’t realize it, but he was inviting debate. However, he thought that what he was saying was a matter of fact and was not debatable. What can you do? The meeting is supposed to be about the business of the Communications group and the company it serves, not about what the Vice-president of the United States knew and when he knew it.
I sent Cletus an email that said, “People in the room may not agree with you when you make politically-charged and debatable statements. The business meeting room is not a proper forum for such debates. I must ask that you refrain.” To Cletus’ credit, he stopped. But I should never have had to call attention to his impolitic remarks. In an awkward way, I felt like I was imposing on his free-speech rights, but I had no authority over him. I wasn’t changing the Constitution. I was advocating decorum.
During the Russian Revolution, the success of the Communists depended upon indoctrination. Similar practices manifested in Nazi Germany a little later. What many people not students of history do not know about the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Third Reich is that they spawned from disorganized democratic governments. On several occasions in the mid-19-teens, the doors to the Duma, or the Russian legislative body, were locked while Lenin’s minions and toadies spouted their vitriol against the former czar, or imperialism, or Jews, or the sitting Kerensky government. Very often special meetings were called for one thing – a business matter, an important tactical or legislative matter – and they ended up as something else. Often they ended up as indoctrinations to the cult of Lenin and the Communist Party. Other times they ended up in violence. Thugs barricaded entryways, and the intimidation began. Real progress for the new government could never be made. We in the west know the rest after 1917.
In Germany, it was the beer hall putsches that helped fuel the fire for Hitler. “Free Beer, Courtesy of the Socialist Democratic Party” the banners read in war-ragged and depressed Germany in the 1920s. How unfortunate that those seeking free beer would later get busted up and jailed for inciting riots and political subversion. And social democracy turned out to be anything but.
Do you see why it makes me nervous – as it did the folks in Orange County and Las Vegas – to go to a concert hall to be entertained, and it ends up being a lecture on governmental change?
Okay, let’s assume I’m going a little off into “That could never happen in America!”-Land here. Let’s now look at it from the commercial artist’s point of view and address the artists at hand. Why jeopardize your fan base? Do you not realize that you are cutting your revenues by alienating what could be (and is the case in Ms. Dixie Chick’s case) half of your listeners? If I know Michael Stipe’s shilling for the Democratic Party, I’m not going to support his cause by buying his music. Unfortunately, it’s a little late for me now, as I bought every R.E.M. album released until 1998 and attended five of their concerts in the 80s and 90s (We’re subsequently selling our leftie merchandise off on Ebay and giving the proceeds to the Republican Party).
The irony of this “Vote for Change” concert is that it was the final straw for me and my relationship with what I used to deem as a great band; I was willing to let Michael Stipe’s 90s tirades go and still relish the romantic-intellectual stimulus the music used to provide me in the 80s. But by using his influence in a sort of Jim Jeffords-like way to bolster support for a group whose existence is based on their disdain for one individual, that’s gone too far. The politically-insensitive far left doesn’t understand that when they blusteringly intercede for one group, they alienate another, sometimes larger, group. They at once admonish the administration for job losses and advocate tearing down Big Business. Do they not realize that jobs and Big Business are not mutually exclusive?
These folks aren’t interested in politics for the greater good. They just don’t like Bush personally. By all accounts, I’ve heard that Bush, on a personal level, is actually an affable and caring individual. Of all the people in the world to focus your ire on, why Bush, the man who is striving to protect you and your freedoms (That is yet another irony worthy of discourse in this whole matter: If George W. Bush and John Ashcroft are such villains of free speech, why aren’t they busting down the front doors of these performers – or even charging back at the entertainment world with their own personal vitriol?)? If you want to direct your ire at someone, why not focus on the silver-tongued Hummer-driving California record producers who profit lopsidedly from your talent?
Another irony is that I once believed there was a degree of charm in Stipe’s murky and ambivalent lyrics. Now I really wonder what the hell he was saying. It’s pretty obvious when he talks without slurring he doesn’t know what the hell he’s saying either.
I’ll admit, sometimes it is a fine line between politics and entertainment. My Web site has blurred and crossed that line. Glenn Beck’s program touts itself as “The Fusion Between Entertainment and Enlightenment.” But while Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have millions of ardent and loyal followers, they both debate one-on-one with callers over statements they make. They don’t say “Listen to my show for three hours of great gardening tips!” You know what you’re listening to once you have tuned into the show. It costs you nothing. It costs you nothing to debate with them. If you like these guys and want to buy their books, you can, and you’ve in turn helped them in their cause, but only after you know of their motives.
But if Limbaugh packed houses and convention halls for $35 a ticket with the promise of beer and cigarettes and a three-hour lecture on gardening, only to assail everyone in the house with an anti-Democrat tirade, how well would that go over?
I will concede that my animations are one-sided, and this column that I write is even moreso. But I don’t call you in to the site, with you expecting to view an “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoon and then present you with a screed on why John F. Kerry is a do-do head and even if he became president, he must’ve stolen the presidency and cheated his way in. Even if you read through my site and disagree with everything I present, it cost you nothing but your time.
And I am not bemoaning free speech or even the notion of democratic rule. Free speech enables me to post this blog. But remember the example of democratic Russia. We have a highly structured representative democracy here. Unfortunately, left-leaners think that the United States is a pure democracy. Athens was a pure democracy, the birthplace of democracy. Athens was also overrun. The city-states in ancient Greece had no organization. So many voices were yelling all at once, the progressive little empire could not stand. The Founding Fathers, studied in the classics, knew this.
Do we know what political affiliation Shakespeare held? I’m sure scholars can speculate based on the tenor of his works and not on his pub chats with Christopher Marlowe and fellow Stratford-on-Avonites. Did Shakespeare get up in front of his audiences before the start of every play and denounce the current monarchy? Granted, the monarchy could take larger liberties meting out its anger against something like that in those days, but Shakespeare never had to explain his position. The message was incorporate in his works. They were messages for the ages, not for the moment. Art is timeless. Politics, by its very definition, is short.
A postscript: Linda Ronstadt cancelled her September engagement at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. Maybe she found out by way of Tedeschi that this is Bush Country, Ma’am, and we don’t take too kindly to Michael Moore.
