Before there were Dixie Chicks, there were The Beatles...
Reactionaries Burning Music
It was 40 years ago today...(well, thereabouts)...and Klansmen and their families, fearing an assault on their precious "values", gathered in fasces to set flame to those ungodly and unpatriot Beatles. And since they were too poor to actually go to England...they set fire to their albums instead.
Flash-forward 40 years...and similarly-minded folk are destroying Dixie Chicks CDs. They are putting people like Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, George Michael, and other outspoken opponents onto graven images, and trying their damndest to anti-worship them to death. Unfortunately, as cyberphilosopher and clicheist, Surreal McCoy, has noted...the problem with hatred is that half the people don't know they are hated, and the the other half don't care. And the strange third half will sick Guido on you. Hating is also bad for the health, manifesting all manner of halitoticities and malolfactions.
The upside of all this daft reactionism is that the really good artists never appear on their screens. You will never see a Ricky Skaggs CD in the same home of an Arvo Part or Radiohead CD. Nor will you see Phillip Glass, Lisa Gerrard, Gorecki, or Ginestera. And that's just the G's. Also safe are David Hykes, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane (largely due to death), King Crimson, Messaien, Stockhausen, Cage, Beth Orton or Bigger Than the Beetles. Most of MP3 is also safe.
So let the reactionaries burn their CDs. The music ain't that good anyway. And besides, it makes them look foolish and petty. And how fun that people like Sir Tim Russert have to lick their low-taste boots...
