Ron Radosh on the Woody Guthrie Tribute Concert

Good music, dreadful politics.  Excerpt:

Unfortunately, the entire event was marred by the hard Left narrative particularly voiced in the most offensive manner by two artists, Tom Morello and Ry Cooder. At least Cooder is a real musician, but that does not excuse his behavior and his leftist rants delivered both in asides and in the rewriting of Guthrie’s lyrics. Cooder sang a little known Guthrie song written towards the end of WW II about how the fascists would all lose. Cooder commented, to great applause from the leftist audience, that we won that fight, but the fascists were still here, and he knew they would be defeated on election day. Singing Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man,” about hired thugs of the coal companies in the early 20^th Century, Cooder changed a lyric to make it about the Trayvon Martin case.  He could have grown up to be President, he said, “but he was killed by a vigilante man.” Then he sang a new verse about how those in the audience should not tell anyone that they attended the concert, or they too might be killed!

Does Ry Cooder really believe that paying an average of $100 for a Kennedy Center concert could lead anyone to be harmed, not to say murdered? Doesn’t he know that by now, Woody Guthrie is a celebrated national hero, honored and revered by many, and no kind of danger to anyone who sings his songs?

How Cooder could be such an idiot is beyond me, but then he is not atypical.  Artists, actors, and musicians hang with their own left-leaning ilk and are never exposed to conservative or libertarian points of view.  They reinforce each others' prejudices.  Denouncing bigotry in others, they exemplify it in excelsis.  Masters of psychological projection, they cannot face what they project into others.  They can emote in all sorts of creative ways, but they cannot think.

Play Ry, play.  But shut up about politics until you learn something.  Two favorites of mine: Yellow Roses. He'll Have to Go.

Radosh reports that Arlo Guthrie is a registered Republican and libertarian.  At least he has his head screwed on Right.  City of New Orleans.  A great piece of Americana.