 KISS front man Simmons has taken musicians to task for their unpatriotic sentiments.
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Posted on 05/05/2003 11:54:09 AM PDT by BFM
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The band Pearl Jam, which became famous during the Seattle "grunge-rock" movement of the 1990s, is not known for having politically conservative enthusiasts. So the reaction of fans at the opening of a new U.S. tour to an antic that lead singer Eddie Vedder performed without controversy in Australia and Japan came as quite a shock to him and to the music industry.
After making a series of antiwar and anti-Bush remarks at an April 1 concert in Denver's Pepsi Center, which were met with a mixture of cheers and boos, Vedder impaled a mask of President George W. Bush on a microphone stand, stabbed it into the floor and began stomping on it. Suddenly the boos were thunderous and dozens of patriotic Pearl Jam fans stormed out of the show.
"When he was sharing his political views ... that's okay," Keith Zimmerman, one of the angry fans, told Denver's Rocky Mountain News. "When he takes what looks like the head of George Bush on a stick, then throws it to the stage and stomps on it, that's just unacceptable. I love Pearl Jam, but that was just way over the edge."
When a fan yelled "Shut up!" at Vedder, the singer fired back in the same manner as have antiwar celebrities ranging from the Dixie Chicks to Martin Sheen to Tim Robbins - that by exercising their own right to free speech the critics somehow are denying that right to the pampered left-wing celebrities. "I don't know if you heard about this thing called freedom of speech, man," an angry Vedder shouted to the patriotic fans. "It's worth thinking about, because it's going away. In the last year of being able to use it, we're sure as f-- going to use it."
But a fellow rocker said if performers continue to do outrageous things such as stabbing a Bush mask, they should expect their record sales to go down. "I don't think everybody that booed will stop buying Pearl Jam records or going to Pearl Jam concerts," observed Gene Simmons, a founder and front man of the heavy-metal band KISS, which has sold more "Gold Records" than any other American music group. "But I do know that a segment of the audience will stop." Simmons tells Insight, "I'm one. I've bought Pearl Jam records. I'm out. He crossed the line."
The Pearl Jam incident proves that it's not just country-music fans who will hold celebrities accountable for irresponsible antiwar statements. "It speaks volumes," says Christian Josi, an internationally known jazz singer and Washington public-relations consultant who was executive director of the American Conservative Union. "That's obviously a very different fan base than the Dixie Chicks have. The fact that Pearl Jam fans would walk out on Eddie Vedder just underscores dramatically that the president sold this to the American people a long time ago, and people just got sick of hearing these celebrities talk out of their ass."
Many antiwar celebrities have not fared well - the plummeting record sales and reduced airplay of the Dixie Chicks, and the abysmally low ratings of Susan Sarandon's CBS TV movie, Icebound, on Easter Sunday, which finished dead last, are examples. In the meantime, celebrities - not all of them necessarily conservative - who made thoughtful arguments in support of the war, such as comedian Dennis Miller and actor James Woods, gained new respect. "The really outspoken anti-Bush celebrities - the Tim Robbinses of the world, the Natalie Maineses of the world - are really going to have a rough time," Josi observes. "That's compounded by the fact that you have other celebrities who you're not used to hearing from: Dennis Miller, James Woods, people who are very thoughtful, very credible and, in some quarters, seen as liberals, all coming out and very intelligently saying why these people are stupid."
Simmons, who gained fame for wagging his long tongue and wearing layers of makeup when KISS shocked the music world in the 1970s, again shocked many in April when he laid out on his Website (www.GeneSimmons.com) his reasons for supporting the war. "I'm ashamed to be surrounded by people calling themselves liberal, who are, in my opinion, spitting on the graves of brave American soldiers who gave their lives to fight a war that wasn't theirs in a country they've never been to, simply to liberate the people therein," Simmons wrote on April 10, just after Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein. "[T]he answer to any doubters lies in watching Iraq's people dancing in the streets."
Simmons said the ratio of supporters to opponents who e-mailed his Website was about 70-30 - the same percentage as in public-opinion polls on the war. He tells Insight that he disagrees with Bush and Republicans on many issues but not on the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein. "I often don't agree with the Republican Party's stance on air, water, big business, Roe v. Wade, ad infinitum," Simmons says. "But in time of war, it's time to cut it out, or we're not here. We can't wait for Saddam Hussein [to act]. He is not a threat to the United States in the conventional sense. But in a very real way, if this son of a bitch gives one suitcase filled with dirty materials - whether it's a nuclear dirty bomb or anything else - to an al-Qaeda guy who's out of his mind. ... Do I have to wait for what will happen in order to say now he's a threat?"
Simmons' conviction about the wisdom of America's cause is due partly to his background. His mother was a Holocaust survivor, and he lived in Israel until he was 9. "My memory is not short," Simmons says. "I'm alive because my mother is alive, and my mother is alive because America liberated her from the Nazi German concentration camps. I'm living proof that there's a country out there that really cared enough to risk its lives, and yet after it beat the country that was spreading this disease, it didn't occupy it, for the first time in history." Simmons adds that France and Germany's ingratitude to the United States "pisses me off."
And he also is peeved at celebrities he sees as pandering to anti-American sentiments while they're abroad, notably the Dixie Chicks and lead singer Natalie Maines, who declared at a London concert: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Simmons says that because of those comments, and the fact that they were made on foreign soil, he has canceled a planned feature for his entertainment magazine, Gene Simmons Tongue, in which the Dixie Chicks would have been on the cover. "In time of war, to aid and give comfort to the enemy on foreign soil, on stage and in a public forum is perfect fodder for anybody's press overseas that has a slightly different agenda, and I think it's reprehensible," Simmons says. "And just because you're cute and have D-cups doesn't mean it's any less reprehensible."
The London comments were not Maines' first foray into politics. Last summer she criticized Toby Keith's chart-topping "Courtesy Of the Red, White and Blue," a country song calling for retaliation against the Middle Eastern countries responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. "I hate it," Maines told the Los Angeles Daily News. "It's ignorant and it makes country music sound ignorant." Although her comments were widely reported in country-music magazines, fans were tolerant of her views and continued to buy Dixie Chicks albums and request their songs on country radio. But with her London comments on March 10 expressing shame that Bush is president, the attitude of country fans seemed to paraphrase a song of country great Merle Haggard: When you're running down my president in a foreign country, and on the brink of war, you're walking on the fighting side of me. Requests came pouring in urging radio stations not to play the Dixie Chicks; some stations even put out dumpsters in which fans deposited their CDs. The group's weekly album sales were reported to have plummeted more than 42 percent.
Large protests are planned when the group starts its U.S. tour in May, and Lipton is being pressured to drop its sponsorship of the tour. Maines' "apology" was no help. After initially defending her comments, she issued a subsequent statement saying: "I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful." But she justified herself on the ground that "we are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war."
To Josi and others, what Maines was saying is that she followed the European antiwar crowd because she didn't want to be perceived as an American redneck. "To try to defend herself, she said anti-American sentiment is very high, so she basically just admitted that she jumped on that bandwagon," Josi said. "It would be one thing to say 'We're opposed to this war' and then give a reason, but to just go after the president personally and say 'We're embarrassed that he's from Texas,' what the hell does that have to do with anything?"
Even the Dixie Chicks' manager, Simon Renshaw, cast doubt on the sincerity of Maines' apology by blaming the negative reaction on the vast right-wing conspiracy, which allegedly gave orders to its character assassins through the conservative Website, freerepublic.com. "Your company is being targeted by a radical right-wing online forum," Renshaw wrote in an e-mail to radio stations being deluged with requests not to play the group's songs. Renshaw's conspiracy theories were similar to those of actor Robbins, longtime boyfriend of Sarandon, in a speech at the National Press Club in mid-April. Robbins allegedly threatened physical violence against Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove, who had reported the disagreement of Sarandon's mother with the couple's politics. Robbins did not deny Grove's charge, but still complained bitterly about intolerance of his views. "A message is being sent through this administration and its allies in talk radio," Robbins proclaimed. "If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. Every day the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent."
But Josi says what Robbins really hates is that in contrast to the 1980s, when Sarandon was shilling for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, there now are voices to hold them accountable for their statements. "With the Internet and with 24-hour news, people are much more informed on basic issues, and I think the old tried-and-true 'I'm a celebrity, so I'm right' doesn't fly any more," Josi says. "Nobody has said that the Tim Robbinses of the world and the Natalie Maineses of the world don't have the right to speak their mind, but people do have the right to decide that they're out of their mind. ... Diversity is coming to Hollywood, and the fascists like Tim Robbins don't like that."
Simmons maintains that no one has a "right" to an audience, and consumers have a right not to patronize celebrities who cross the line. "America is made up of people who have the right to buy or not buy your stuff for any reason they choose, and if what you stand for and who you are incenses them, they have a right to not put money in your pocket," he says. "For example, I have female fans. If I get up there and say something very sexist, the female fans have a right, because their sense of who I am was insulted, to not put money in my pocket. ... Nobody is curtailing Tim Robbins' rights. However, if a Tim Robbins movie came out today - and I've seen some of his other movies and I've enjoyed them - would I go see it? No."
The attitude of patriotic media consumers such as Simmons already is having an impact. Madonna recently decided to withdraw a video in which she threw a grenade at a Bush look-alike. Darryl Worley's pro-war country song, "Have You Forgotten?" is in its fourth week at No. 1 on Billboard's country-singles chart. Worley and other musicians supporting the war, such as veteran country singer Charlie Daniels, have been given a boost by conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity, who has featured them on his ABC Radio and Fox News TV programs and in the "Song Club" on his Website (www.Hannity.com). Daniels' publicist, Kirt Webster, tells Insight that there has been an increase in sales of Daniels' book and in his fan-club membership that he hopes will translate into more music sales when Daniels releases an album of patriotic songs this summer. "These are busy times for us," says Webster, who also represents patriotic singers Hank Williams Jr. and Lee "God Bless the USA" Greenwood.
But Simmons and Josi say that support for the war alone will not propel a celebrity to the top, nor should it. Patriotism should be its own reward. "I don't think you'll necessarily see a spike in the career of any of the pro-war people," Josi says. "I think you will see a lot of good will in the public's hearts toward these folks."
John Berlau is a writer for Insight magazine.
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THAT'S a keeper. Nail on the head BUMP!!
I like Gene and appreciate his patriotism but I ain't buyin' that the Dixie Chicks were *ever* gonna be featured on the cover of his magazine!
LOL! The fact that country music fans are generally conservative and FR is a conservative forum which would likely contain a high proportion of country fans never appears to occur to the brain twisted idiot. Figures.
THAT'S a keeper. Nail on the head BUMP!!
Yep! The moment I read that, it went into the queue for Quote of the Week on my site! :)
-Jay
GREAT!
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