filkertom | Defend Johnny Cash

As this story in The Nation tells, the Republican Party is trying to claim they're the party of the late Johnny Cash.

A man who spent his entire career singing about, and defending, the kinds of people that the Right Wing routinely stomps on.

There are a bunch of great links in the story above, the most important of which is DefendJohnnyCash.org.

They've stolen the government, they've stolen our money, they've stolen our freedoms. They ain't stealin' The Man In Black.

Update: I will take this at face value. Rosanne Cash says that the party is not a co-opting of her father by the Republicans, but a party for an old family friend, Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

garou43.livejournal.com

Kinda makes ya wonder if they'll ever wise up, no?

From:

billroper

I'm desperately searching this article for someplace where the Republicans are claiming that Johnny Cash would support them. I find this paragraph:

Yet, this Tuesday the GOP and the American Gas Association, a network of 154 utility multinationals, are shamelessly trying to appropriate the singer-songwriter's legacy by hosting an exclusive "celebration" of Cash for the Republican delegation from Tennessee inside the exclusive corridors of Sotheby's auction house.

Well, that can't be it, unless one assumes that it's impossible to love the music of Johnny Cash if you're an evil Republican. (I've rather enjoyed it myself and thought that his recent cover of "Hurt" was one of the finest pieces of music video that I've ever seen.) I've clicked on the links for the Tennessee delegates and for the utility organization and come up empty.

Maybe I'm missing something here, or maybe someone is just looking for an excuse to organize a demonstration.

From:

filkertom.livejournal.com

Well, Bill, I don't consider you to be an Evil Republican. ;) Here's what I think you're missing, though: For his entire career -- what, sixty years? -- Cash sang about poor people, downtrodden people, prisoners, the oppression of the American Indians... the lower classes, the working classes, the struggling classes.

And the Tennessee delegates are going to have an big-ticket, hosted-by-multinational-energy-concerns exclusive "celebration" of him at frickin' Sotheby's.

It's precisely the kind of thing he would've sung against.

From:

billroper

Maybe. As noted elsewhere, he's not here to defend himself from the Republicans, nor from the people who are trying to defend him.

Now you might consider that this is the Tennessee delegation, from the home of the Grand Old Opry, and that this is "their kind of music".

You might consider that people like Peter David argue that consumers of entertainment ought to separate the politics of the entertainer from the entertainment itself, which would suggest that it would be a good thing to honor the work of a man whose politics might differ from yours.

You might even consider that there are -- perhaps a novel concept -- Republicans who believe that they are attempting to help poor people, downtrodden people, etc. because they believe that the policies that have helped create an underclass during the last half century or so haven't worked and that we should maybe try some different things. While there are certainly sociopaths out there who just don't give a damn about the rest of the world, most people actually set out to do good. You can disagree with policy, because policies are certainly debatable, but it's just a big fat mistake to assume that those policies are generally motivated by evil intent and to demonize the people who are -- perhaps in a misguided way -- trying to do good.

I'm going to give you a hypothetical example and I'm going to pick on John Kerry, because he's convenient. Let's suppose -- which means that I am not actually attributing this set of motivations to him, nor am I saying that, in the real world, he was either telling the truth or lying when he spoke before Congress on the Vietnam War -- that he felt in his heart of hearts that the Vietnam War was a bad thing and had to be stopped at any cost. He knew that, while some atrocities had been committed by American soldiers, they were rare. But by testifying before Congress that these were common and supported all the way up the chain of command, he could help stop that war. Such a lie would be justified for the greater good, no? And he would firmly believe that he was doing the right thing.

Now, if you were one of the people that he slandered, you'd be pretty justifiably upset. But it wouldn't necessarily mean that Kerry was a bad person! (Here in Hypothetical Land, that is.) :)

And because you disagree with Republican policies, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad people.

Does this make any sense?

From:

filkertom.livejournal.com

I thought about the "Grand Ole Opry" thing. If that were the case, though, wouldn't it be much more productive to have it be a more public affair? Again, the thing is hosted by a multinational oil concern, which I'm sure resonates in the hearts of Nashville. B-7 Heck, an open-air thing, even with ticket prices, even with the big donors getting the best seats, would be fine. It's not. It's a private affair, run by a big Republican donor, in a fancy-shmancy auction venue.

I disagree with Peter David re: the arts and activism. Most people whose work has a point of view very deliberately tie the one to the other. Sometimes this is positive, sometimes negative -- but, even if the work does not take a side, noteriety tends to provide a platform, and from that platform a lot of people have taken sides, and therefore in retrospect their work becomes associated with their positions. First one that leaps to mind is Vanessa Redgrave.

I'm absolutely sure there are Republicans who believe etc. Unfortunately, they don't have the floor. And pretty much every single policy of the Bush administration has put money in the pockets of people who already have lots of money, while talking it from those who don't have much to begin with. And the public philosophical base supports those policies vigorously even when they're shown to be at best ineffective for the stated purposes and at worst detrimental to the people they purport to help.

And your example doesn't work. It is, in fact, a bald statement of "the ends justify the means", which is incredibly dangerous and has led to great suffering over the history of humanity. (Not to mention being the primary motivation for most mad scientists and Bond villains.) And the specific example fails as well. Lying for the greater good is lying. Destroying careers and lives And when such a lie is found out, the noise generated from that will likely overwhelm the original argument. That would more thoroughly discredit the lying side than anything. (And, it's a spurious argument point. Atrocities are atrocities. Rare, common -- they shouldn't be. At all.) So, here in the Real World, yeah, Kerry would be a bad person for lying about such things to Congress about that.

Doing the right thing, in a civilized society based on laws, means telling the truth and making the laws work. Many of our current difficulties come from people lying, or at least obscuring the whole truth, and making the laws weapons rather than tools.

And I disagree with policies that hurt people. I disagreed with Don't Ask Don't Tell, I still have problems with aspects of NAFTA, and welfare reform and the Defense of Marriage Act had, and have, lots wrong with them.

But the past three-and-a-half years have been a litany of policy after policy where Dubya and his cronies say one thing and do another, promise something and then fail to finance it, praise something in public and encourage its destruction, elimination, or undercutting in private. Over and over and over and over, with no apparent regard except their financial backers, business partners, and evangelical supporters. What else am I supposed to think except such are bad people? And what am I supposed to think of their supporters, people victimized by the very policies they've been hornswoggled into supporting?

Does that make any sense?

From:

filkertom.livejournal.com

And I even agree with Vanessa Redgrave sometimes (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0823-03.htm).

From:

billroper

I'm going to pick the trivial case: I would lie to save Gretchen's life. The ends would justify the means and I have arrived on the slippery slope. This is not to say that I do not value the truth -- I do. I prefer the truth and prefer, in general, to hear truth.

My point (which I think I obscured) is that someone who is lying "for the greater good" believes that they are a good person, just as most (non-sociopathic) people believe that they are trying to do the right thing -- that they are good people.

I was about to launch into a discussion of charter schools (as an example, since they've been in the news recently), but this will only send us off around the loop again. Suffice it to say that I believe that the people who argue for and against charter schools are operating from what they believe to be the best of motives, whether they are right or not. (The news report that said charter schools were ineffective turned out not to control for race. When that's controlled for, it looks about dead even, if I understand correctly.)

From:

filkertom.livejournal.com

Ah, but would you falsely incriminate someone else, several someone else's, to save Gretchen's life? Because that's what you're talking about here. "They went that-away" or "She doesn't have the plans -- I do" are a long way from "They did it! It was them, not me or her! Them!"

And my point was exactly the same. Most of the great villains of history did not think of themselves as villains. People don't think that way. They may be selfish, they may be altruistic, they may be blinded by faith or doctrine or philosophy or love or hate or chemical imbalance, they may be just bone stupid... but they have what they consider to be good reasons.

And... indeed, let's not get into charter schools, shall we? :)

From:

poltr1

I hate it when the Pubbies claim they're the party of Abraham Lincoln. He tried to unite the country, not divide it like the current neocon Republicans are doing now.

Time for the centrists to take the party back, and kick the neocons into the Constitution Party.

From:

dbcooper.livejournal.com

I dunno...they only really seem pro-Constitution when they can use it to justify grabbing more of our money and resources.

From:

poltr1

Huh? When I said "Constitution Party", I was referring to Michael Peroutka, Chuck Baldwin, and these people. Should these people get into power (and I really hope they don't).....Be afraid. Be very afraid.

From:

dbcooper.livejournal.com

Oh. I hadn't realized they call themselves "The Constitution Party" for the same reason "Ducks Unlimited" is so named...each apparently wants to carefully hunt down and kill its namesake. ;)

From:

holzman.livejournal.com

Maybe it's a celebration of "cash." You know -- like the rest of the convention.

Seriously, it is sort of heartening to see that they think they have to go here to score some support.