The Rolling Stones' upcoming album contains a song seemingly critical of President Bush, but Mick Jagger denies it's directed at him.
Jagger and his band have a lucrative contract with the NFL. The Rolling Stones will help kick off the 2005 season from their "A Bigger Bang" world tour with footage from their concert in Detroit as part of "NFL Opening Kickoff 2005" -- a one-hour pre-game special.
ABC also will feature music and video footage of The Rolling Stones throughout the 2005 season in its Monday Night Football promotional campaigns and in-game highlight and tease packages.
Here’s some advice for the NFL: Give the Stones the boot.
You can’t prevent entertainers from wandering into political territory. Their egos are too big, and their common sense is often too small. So people like Jagger, Linda Ronstadt, Ted Danson, Alec Baldwin, Al Franken, etc., are going to bring politics into their work, or use their inflated status and overblown egos to justify inserting their ideas into the political arena. This is America: People are free to be stupid if they want to. Politics seems to bring the stupid entertainers out of the woodwork.
But the NFL is a different proposition. It is an American institution. It has always represented an American ideal, and promoted an American character. The Rolling Stones' new song is sharply at odds with the traditions of the NFL.
Besides, why settle for an over-the-hill bunch of geriatric rockers who have little real musical talent? The Stones are quite average, as musicians go. Their music is popular with a particular segment of the population, but it isn’t special from an objective musical point of view.
The NFL would do well if it canned Jagger.
10 comments:
They are getting a little long in the tooth, but they still rock.
Have you heard the song? In what way is it critical? I haven't heard it yet.
I've heard pieces of the song, and there are clear criticisms of the Bush administration, if not of Bush himself.
I personally don't care a bit what Jagger and the Stones think of Bush, but I do care if an American institution like the NFL endorses anti-American messages in the music of some group by associating with that group like the NFL is doing here.
There are plenty of people who are as good as TRS who don't bash the U.S. that the NFL could use.
Reminds me of another country I know of where they forbid their citizens access to music that fails to glorify the state.
What's it called again?
Oh yeah, North Korea.
Go ahead and stop the NFL endorsing the Stones - it will actually guarantee their album will go platinum and maximise nationwide exposure to their material.
Mr. Shott, PuuuuuuuhLEASE!
Maybe if the Stones played that specific song at an NFL even, you might have a case. That's like me saying you should be denied some sort of analogous employment b/c of this blog and its pro-Bush sentiments.
Mr. P:
I see you come from the Dick Durbin school. There is a big difference between state sponsored censorship, as in communist Korea, and the unilateral decision of a private institution to change its mind about who it wants to entertain audiences.
I don't care if the album goes Titanium. I feel that TRS' attitude toward the U.S. is something the NFL ought not to promote through its selection them to perform for NFL audiences.
Mr. i e p:
You are exactly right. My public expression of political opinions is fair game for future employers, should they feel I might be a detriment to their image, or should my opinions be at odds with theirs, as TRS' expression of anti-American political ideas is contrary to the position the NFL has carefully honed for itself regarding the U.S.
Mr. S.,
So, an anti-Bush song is inherently anti-American?
I suggest you boycott the NFL this season. Write O'Reilly
Mr. i e p,
I didn't say "an anti-Bush song is inherently anti-American," I said the song in question is anti-American.
I have been boycotting the NFL for years. I have an aversion to watching overpaid crybabies (Terrell Owens comes to mind).
Hmmmm. The only stuff I've been able to find about the song thusfar says it is anti-Bush and neo-con policies. Not anti-American.
TO is a little baby, but overpaid? It capatalism at its finest
Whether a song is anti-American or not is to a degree in the eye of the beholder. The overriding point, to me, is that if TRS wants to sing political lyrics, that's fine with me. If they want to bash the U.S. over the Iraq war, that's fine with me, too.
However, if they choose to do that, and if enough Americans object and the NFL responds, or if the NFL unilaterally decides to exclude them from entertaining its audience, that's okay with me, too. That's also capitalism at its finest.
TO has a right to make as much as he can. He ought to grow up, though. He's playing a kids game, but he isn't required to act like a kid to do it. He has kin in baseball and basketball.
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