What If They Gave A Protest Movement And Nobody Came?The latest effort to kick start the anti-war crowd is an old one indeed:
Protest songs.
In fact, a flurry of recent and upcoming albums take a strong antiwar stance. They're aggressive and unapologetic, ranging from the abstract musings of the Flaming Lips -- who don't name Bush on their new album but have repeatedly invoked him in interviews as the inspiration for it -- to the 69-year-old Haggard's blunt lyric, ''Let's get out of Iraq an' get back on track," on the recently released song ''America First."Oddly, they don't even mention the upcoming Neil Young effort.
I'm conflicted about this trend. In the 1960s musicians certainly had a strong and mostly negative impact on society; I'd not care to see that repeated. Then of course they were selling hedonism and drugs in addition to the anti-war message. On the other hand, it's a market and the more money that is spent on CDs and other frivolity is diverted from the coffers of the DNC.