What's the aphorism? The Iraq war is over and Iran won?
We've been duped. We're in a war, a fruitless war, a losing war, a lost cause, worse than that a cause that is destabilizing a whole region making terrorism more likely, and the news media and the music business are just laying down.
It's the business of the media to inform the people. But these nitwits, like record company executives, are so fearful of losing their jobs, so beholden to ratings, that they've abdicated their core mission. They didn't challenge the war's false pretenses and they let Karl Rove have a free pass in the Plame affair and they focus on the inanity and insanity of Laci Peterson and Michael Jackson rather than explain the boring story to the public how they're under the thumb of an Administration ruled by religious zealots paying back fat cats.
The body count doesn't tell the whole story. With medical and technical advances wounded soldiers are now living rather than dying. Maimed, but we don't see their plight depicted in the media, hell, it's against the mission to show flag-draped coffins, it's POSITIVELY UNAMERICAN TO QUESTION THE REGIME! Isn't questioning the regime what this country is BASED upon?
If the media only showed the bodies of the maimed soldiers on television every night this crazy war would end pronto. Because the people just can't handle it. Oh, they can handle three dollar a gallon gas, but not the ultimate sacrifice, life and limb.
Cindy Sheehan is the anti-Republican. The anti-religious zealot. Like an anti-abortion crusader who's had a fetus removed from her body she's confronted the cold hard reality of life. And that's death. When your loved one dies, all the patriotism, all the praying, all the crap won't bring them back. You question everything. You know no limits. Your anger supersedes decorum, makes you do things you normally wouldn't, because you're in such PAIN!
Rather than cop to this pain, the plight of our country, the Republicans go on attack. Outing Valerie Plame, labeling MIchael Moore a traitor and marginalizing Paul Krugman for speaking the truth. We live in a topsy-turvy era where what you get is supposed to be free, and if you don't want something, if it's going to help your brother but not you, you don't want to pay the taxes that will support it.
How did we come to this point? Where the public is ignorant and voting against its own self-interest. Where poor people are in favor of repealing the estate tax when it will never ever apply to them. It's simple. By not funding education. By making the goals of Americans to be on reality shows and to become rappers. By making people believe they have a chance of winning the lottery. By keeping them out of the loop, they've become dumb, just where the government wants them. Facts are irrelevant. There's a think tank to debunk seemingly every well-established scientific truth. Reality is no longer what can be proven, but what governing officials say it is.
If the news media isn't going to stand up to the government, and truly reveal the quagmire we're in, in Iraq and financially, it falls to the artists. But, there are no artists anymore. Just ignorant dupes like Jessica Simpson and her fake sister Ashlee.
Then again, MTV won't air anything controversial and Clear Channel owns a huge portion of the airwaves. When is ANYBODY going to sacrifice self-interest for the greater good?
It's great that every artist showed up for a photo op on July 2nd to end African hunger, but how about an issue closer to home, one we have more power over, how about the artists uniting to end this war.
It's not really that complicated. Military recruitment is already low. It's about getting the word out, informing people, that just because a leader says something's true, it's not necessarily so.
Tonight on "Six Feet Under" they showed a maimed American soldier. This one image, of a man without three of his limbs, illuminated the fallacy of this war more than all the drivel put forth by the talking heads on cable news. THAT'S the power of TV. The image.
But if you show those images the government will retaliate.
But that's the role of the media. To expose truth.
And that's what great art does, expose truth.
I'm not sure there's a great antiwar anthem bubbling, but I am sure that if Bruce Springsteen and the other anti-Bush protesters and a bevy of new acts took their cause to the Washington Monument, there'd be TV coverage, people would start to think. It's 1968 all over again. A year ago, the public was under the illusion this war could be won. But Bush's approval rating has sunk. There's dissension in the Republican party. Just because the Democrats lost the election doesn't mean change can't be effected now. It's time to re-release that record, market conditions have changed, the public's ready to hear the tune. Now's the time to organize. Now's the time for artists to lead the way.
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