[fatnotlazy]

Darn shame; I like Paisley. Unfortunately, you’re going to find that a huge number of celebs are in the tank for Obama. Not much we can do about it. You could do the Dixie Chicks boycott, but if you do that for every artist, you won’t have a whole lot of entertainment in your life. It just depends on how important their political views are to you.

[bboop]

For me, they are welcome to their political beliefs. I just don’t want to hear about them ad nauseum. Dixie Chicks got what they deserved — they badmouthed the US abroad. Hey, so’s Obama. Maybe we should (trash his CDs?)(gather and burn his posters)(march on DC).

[Global2010]

We would not diss a musician and boycott per there sucking upness.

But it sure makes you wonder about their faithfulness when writing such Patriotic songs.

[Stultis]

Unfortunately, you’re going to find that a huge number of celebs are in the tank for Obama. Not much we can do about it. You could do the Dixie Chicks boycott, but if you do that for every artist, you won’t have a whole lot of entertainment in your life. It just depends on how important their political views are to you.

My practice in this regard is probably, if I'm honest, almost entirely arbitrary. At least it's very subjective, and quite inconsistent.

For instance, although I've never bought anything by them, I'll happily sit and watch a music video of Rage Against the Machine, even though they are almost literal Stalinists, just because they rock really hard. But a lefty band like, say, Green Day, who don't quite approach the Stalinist realm, but are snarky little punks, I'll switch off immediately.

There are any number of artists I've listened to for a long time -- e.g. Elvis Costello (pretty liberal I think), Van Morrison (dunno), Joe Jackson (liberal to lefty and anti-American), or Richard Thompson (a leftist folkster, and Muslim convert, but intellectually honest and not pushy) -- who I would probably continue to listen to and buy their CDs almost regardless of what I incidentally discovered about their political views. They'd have to get really obnoxious to put me off.

Sometimes I'll still listen to an artist even though they have sometimes been actively obnoxious -- e.g. Chrissie Hynde -- but sometimes I won't, depending on my mood.

Occasionally, however, there is an artist I really like, who has done something so damned ugly, that I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to them again. A sad case for me is the singer and songwriter John Prine. He is one of the great American songwriters, up there with Neil Young and Bob Dylan. And yet in 2005, he came out with this fetid, stinking hate song:

Some Humans Ain't Human (excerpt)

Have you ever noticed
When you're feeling really good
There's always a pigeon
That'll come shit on your hood

Or you're feeling your freedom
And the world's off your back
Some cowboy from Texas
Starts his own war in Iraq

Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind
They lie through their teeth
With their head up their behind
You open up their hearts
And here's what you'll find
Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind

I was watching him perform on Austin City Limits, and thoroughly enjoying the show. Then, without any warning, he dropped this turd. It made me ill at the time, and ever since has ruined every wonderful (and non-political) song Prine ever wrote. The self-rightious sunnufabitch put it on an album, where at least you can skip it. Why but why, why, why inflict a live audience -- a Texas audience, no less -- with that kind of self-indulgent bile?