Rock and Roll Requiem

Today's report from Our Al Franken Lister (OAFL) Rick:

Today's show featured Mike Mills of REM, talking about the Vote for Change Tour . Catherine Lampshade asked Mills if there were any plans to tape the events for re-broadcast. Word to Catherine: based on the Radio City Music Hall Fundraiser, and Al Franken's latest personal appearance, you don't want TV camera's anywhere near this tour.

OAFL Rick is right, past precedent would show that subjecting the average American voter to the temper tantrums of the artistic Left can only hurt the Democrats in this election. No doubt the party operatives in charge are aware of this, so I suspect these musicians will be on a tight rhetorical leash (censorship!). On stage, there will be no swearing, no obscene gestures, no loony conspiracy theorizing, no attempts at exposing the depths of their intellectual understanding of current events. It will be just music and pro-Kerry sunshine boy exclamations, I'd wager.

But no matter how hard you try, one thing you can't remove from artists is their need to be special. And their need to make sure you know about it. Cue the weepy violin solo and read this excerpt from their "artist declaration" (call me a purist if you will, but the very existence of a mission statement for a concert tour strikes me as contrary to the soul of rawk and roll):

We plan to do something never done before--to concentrate our energies in the states where the election is expected to be closest. We hope this commitment of time and effort by so many artists and our willingness to take our energy to so many parts of the country will help inspire our fellow citizens to take a hard look at what is at stake in this election, at the federal, state, and local level, and to get involved in trying to move our country in a truly compassionate and humane direction.

Will this unprecedented, extraordinary commitment of time and back breaking effort (that is to say, a luxury concert tour) by so many multi-millionaire artists really inspire the average Joe to vote to raise his own taxes and decrease the security and sovereignty of his country? Are our fellow citizens really so pathetic that they need something called Bright Eyes to tell them how to vote?

Time will tell. But a victory by Bush this November has the added benefit of sending these pretentious buffoons into a spiral of public self doubt and loathing that would be truly entertaining to watch. So even if you're not a Republican, consider voting for Bush anyway, just to see Jackson Browne implode. That would be so punk.