alexv wrote:EC does indeed have a right to express his views wherever he wishes, and concert goers can get upset with them if they wish, but really can't deny him the right to use whatever venue is available to him to express them.
Having said that, once his pearls of wisdom are sent to us, we have a right to analyse them with the same vigor we apply to his lyrics. So here's my reaction.
In the Billboard post, the one that got Thomasso all upset thinking that EC was loving those "ignorant yankees", I was struck by the following:
"I have looked forward to living in the true value of this country for the last 25 years, and it is an ideal we give up at our peril," he continues. "Everything that I have ever loved about America is rapidly being eroded -- the unspoiled vastness, that, at its best, can absorb such cultural, religious and regional diversity, and the basic decency -- when it isn't tainted by one or other corruption of a belief inspired by a government intent on establishing some freakish hybrid: a spin-controlled theocracy."
A strangely inarticulate paragraph from our hero, but assuming it's verbatim, it's nice to know that he has been pining for our fair land for the last 25 years, although I am troubled by his feeling that our "unspoiled vastness" which absorbs our various diversities, and our basic decency are being eroded and tainted by our current government's establishment of a "spin-controlled theocracy(?)" in Iraq.
I know he's a smart guy and all, but how has he managed to determine that our vastness, decency and diversity are being destroyed by two terms of a Republican administration. I think we have survived worse. Is he aware that we survived Nixon? and Andrew Johnson? and Warren Harding? and Calvin Coolidge? His ability to come to grasp with our country's vastness in such a short time takes me back to Sting's old comment about how he knew america better than americans since he had toured the whole country. I always got a laugh out of that one. Yeah, boys, one day in Spokane. Got it, now for the Southeast. Idiot!! EC seems to be taking in some of those Summner fumes.
But it's not surprising really, since later in the interview he credits Emylou's "stronger american folk-music element" with allowing him to speak to americans in their "own musical element". I don't know what century EC is living on, but if you travel around America today you won't be aided in your ability to communicate with the common folk by Emylou's legendary voice stylings. Folk music is all but irrelevant in our society these days. In fact folk music hasn't really been about "folks" since at least the 50s when it was hijacked by educated hipsters. If he wants to connect, maybe he can try rap, or Sting's music.
Then we get his tour summary in his web site, which coincidentally brings him back to Thomasso's heart, apparently due to the following comment:
"Naturally, not every one was in agreement. There were a few competing boos in Columbus and a woman reportedly stormed out in Dayton, vowing to never to return to one of my shows but I would regard anything else as “Un-American”."
Now, if you interpret this remark a la Thomasso, he must be saying that the hysterical reaction of the lady from Dayton is a typical "american" reaction, i.e. intolerant and narrow minded. If that is the meaning, then I am puzzled, since this anti-americanism contrasts markedly with the sentiments expressed in the Billboard article about vastness, diversity, and decency. And Does anybody in Ohio.... have that kind of power to make our hero forget our decency and vastness? Or maybe he's just trying to say, that he expected some dissent, since an absence of dissent would be unamerican, which is not really a dis at America, which should be troubling to Thomasso. Which is it, I wonder?
And then we get the now common plea to equate murder and murder:
"Fifty-two people are killed in London and we know all about them in a matter of hours. Fifty-two, supposedly liberated, people die in Iraq, two days later, and it barely makes a footnote in the paper next to latest blockbuster movie ad. Meanwhile, more foot soldiers fall in behind the standard of one or other pampered son of a dynasty."
EC is puzzled by our inability to see that all 104 people in his example deserve equal mourning. I am not. The fifty-two in London were presumably English or permanent residents of england. The 52 killed in Iraq, are either soldiers for whom death is always a factor, or people who attack soldiers trying to kill them, or innocent iraqui civilians caught in their country's awful mess, which did not start by the way with the american invasion, but started much earlier with the mass killings of the deposed dictator, to which londoners have thankfully not been subjected. Why should it surprise EC that in London people care more about their 52 than about the Iraqui 52? Is that a sign of moral depravity or chauvinism? Does he think that the papers in Iraq, will chronicle the lives of the London 52 with the same intensity as their own victims? This is the now standard approach towards criticizing the West: you set up an unrealistic standard of behavior and when it is not met, you demonize the west. Bullshit I say.
Oh, for the record, I started out as a lukewarm supporter of the war in Iraq because I assumed that the people of Iraq would accept temporary american occupation of their country as the price to pay to get rid of a madman who had tortured them for years. Events in the past year have convinced me that I was wrong, and that there is a sizable element in that country who hate what america and the west stand for so much that no amount of effort will get them to lay down their arms. I am convinced now that it was a mistake, and that we have to find a way out of there, and leave them with some semblance of order and allow them to live the way they want to live. So I am now an opponent of the war. Having said that, I am also an opponent of idiotic generalizations about america and americans, regardless of their source.
RinghioStarr wrote:alexv wrote:And then we get the now common plea to equate murder and murder:
"Fifty-two people are killed in London and we know all about them in a matter of hours. Fifty-two, supposedly liberated, people die in Iraq, two days later, and it barely makes a footnote in the paper next to latest blockbuster movie ad. Meanwhile, more foot soldiers fall in behind the standard of one or other pampered son of a dynasty."
EC is puzzled by our inability to see that all 104 people in his example deserve equal mourning. I am not.
I don't see where he's saying that. He's talking about media. And people's feeling are also determined by what you're aware of, and the media tends to determine your awareness.
Strangely the media, when they want, underline what there is some dictator that is applying mass murder on some population, and everybody goes boo... And everybody goes "get rid of him"! Other times not.
Other times - for example when your nation is involved in what should haven been a liberation war but is actually a mass murder... Oh, strangely the newspapers, the radios, and whatever, are not keen in underline the fact that there are civilians and innocent victims "in that war in that far foreign country overthere"... And that they are caused by your own country.
Oh, I suppose it's just a case, isn't it?
The fifty-two in London were presumably English or permanent residents of england. The 52 killed in Iraq, are either soldiers for whom death is always a factor, or people who attack soldiers trying to kill them, or innocent iraqui civilians caught in their country's awful mess, which did not start by the way with the american invasion, but started much earlier with the mass killings of the deposed dictator, to which londoners have thankfully not been subjected.
90% of war casualties are civilians. This is a widely known fact. So, I don't know if Elvis checked that fact he's referring about, but there is a "slight" percentage of probability that they *do* were civilians.
And by the way, this war just substitued Hussein's mass-killings with another mass-killing.
In iraq died in this war between 20.000 and 100.000 people (these are the two edges of the various valuations).
Before that there was an embargo who killed dozens of thousands of people, woman, aged ones and children included.
In Iraq used to die a couple of "twin towers" of children every month.
It was a case that our newspapers didn't talk about that?
"Oh, how can't they love American and European people? Ungrateful Iraqi people!".
That's all I have to say about it.
Goodbye.
Seems we got a strong american view from some of the board members. I'm not going to get into it, because the moderator would kick my ass out of here if he read what I would have to say about this whole argument
. Anyway, all I have to say is, the rich world is greedy and only acts for a beneficial purpose. USA and Isrealare good contendors (there is a perfectly good reason for the withdrawal in Gaza).
That was the best live show I've seen in quite some time (.......ummmm, ...of course, I "had" to take my wife to see KC and the Sunshine Band perform the previous summer, so..... 
