"And Now a Shout Out To My Homies at GM and Ford"

    I just watched a documentary on Joe Stummer and the "only band that mattered", and it disturbed me a little .  I have been more than a disillusioned lately by the state of American culture in general. I am also living under cloud of my own making which has something to do with whether or not I'm going to be able to keep up with the speed of transition in this interconnected world.

   On one hand, I am bloody amazed and excited by the potential to expand our knowledge  of the universe, but, on the other hand, I am worried by the fact that, in the past, such change has usually been the harbinger of overwhelming death and destruction. I am so more than a little bit worried about the lack of intelligence that some of my fellow humans seem quite happy to exhibit.

   Back to Strummer movie, I have always been a little bit amused when an musical artist is willing to shout out a few bits of anticapitalist  ideology,  how many fans are willing to turn off their brains and fall groveling at the artist's feet and painting them as modern day Robin Hoods.

To me, it is a bit pretentious. I am always reminded that there were no great rock bands coming out of Russia under communist rule. There are none from China. There are some good rock bands in Iran, but if they get caught playing rock music, they are imprisoned. Most of them would love the opportunity to be able to get up in front of an audience and bash the restrictive nature of the regime, but it would probably cost them their life.

  I wish that just once, one of these Robin Hood minstrels would at least offer a disclaimer, "We are going to sing our next song "Kill the Greedy F####g Pigs", but first, we would like to acknowledge the role of the free enterprise system in helping to create an environment of free speech where artists like us can say what we think to people who have absolutely no concept of history and have those same people buy our music."

   Nothing more than that. I am not asking that Bono quit strutting around like he's a better dressed Ghandi or for Rage Against the Machine to go and promote free speech in Venezuela. Just a disclaimer, that's all.