I think this is actually exactly the reason I overlook the politics thing with some people, and not others. Some Hollywood types piss me off with their politics, but it really isn’t the politics per se (my very bestest friend in the whole world is a socialist, and I am a libertarian, so I’m not about to write off everyone who doesn’t happen to agree with me…how lame would that be?) It’s just that it makes me completely nuts when certain people have an attitude that they are so damn smart about politics when a lot of times they don’t even seem to have the least clue what they are talking about.
Funny, those are some of my favourite NMA songs -I agree completely with the politics of the latter (find it funny how nothing’s changed in 20 years, either), and have always seen the former as anti-corporate rather than anti-science, but of course interpretations differ.
Kelsey Grammer has always made me laugh, and he was a great Beast, so I continue to like him, even if he is an ardent Bush supporter.
They don’t do this. They are portrayed as doing this.
IMO.
-Kris
“Portrayed” by themselves, then. Did you happen to see Sean Penn’s recent full page ad in The Washington Post?
I didn’t. What did it say?
Barbara Steisand … not really, her music sucks too. IMHO
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Kanye West yet.
Maybe no one loves him as an “artist.”
Didn’t see it.
What about it is smug, self-righteous, self-important, or indicates that Penn is an expert on account of his fame?
The mere act of placing a statement in a publication isn’t sufficient to count as any of these things. What is it about the text of the ad which should be interpreted as showing Penn falls under one of the listed categories?
-Kris
I can, maybe, see the point behind 51st State, though I really don’t know enough about English politics to say either way. White Coats I take as anti-science because it’s about White Coats, not the guys in the suits. It’s probably a mix. I am probably somewhat prejudiced because I grew up around a bunch of scientists. I know a bunch of these guys and they all were good, honest people who were working to make things better.
I was thinking about this today and forgot one of my biggest pet peeves, Stephen King and the book that should have never been published TOMMYKNOCKERS. Kings anti-nuclear stance was so overblown and there was, IIRC, some really serious mistakes about nuclear energy that I was barely able to finish it. It is by far my least favorite of his books. Yet, I still dig King. Just won’t ever read that book again.
Slee
I’ve been a fan of Penn & Teller for for more than 25 years. Hell, I knew them before they were Penn & Teller, when Penn did a solo comedy juggling act in a leather apron and Teller did a solo silent magic act. I’ve seen dozens of their shows, and just last January saw them in Vegas at James Randi’s The Amazing Meeting, and caught their show at the Rio. (Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture I took of me and Penn when I bunch of us TAMers met them after the show. We’re posing for someone in front of us who’s taking a group picture, but Penn’s looking straight at my camera. I love it.)
As Sam Stone mentioned, P&T are libertarians and I’m a knee-jerk pinko liberal. This wasn’t a problem for me until sometime in the second series of their Showtime cable show, Bullshit! As a skeptic, I had no problem with them exposing mediums, astrologers, and other scam artists for the bullshitters they are.
But when they started labelling recycling, and other things with which they disagreed politically, but about which reasonable people can differ, as bullshit, well, they crossed a line. I think they’ve drawn out the Bullshit concept longer than it deserves. Also, the later shows are more mean-spirited and have fewer attempts at anything resembling a well-reasoned arguments than the early shows did. And they just aren’t as funny.
Sadly, P&T’s stage show has declined, too, and I don’t say this because I have philosophical differences with them. I hadn’t seen them perform live in eight or ten years, but 80-90% of their show at the Rio was stuff I had seen before, and the new stuff looked like it was from a third-rate magicians’ act. It was pretty disappointing. I’m sorry to say that they’re just getting tired and stale, IMO. Maybe their touring show is fresher than the stuff they churn out for the tourists in Vegas. I hope so.
OTOH, I just saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers, whom I’ve been following about as long as P&T, and their current show is very good, and had lots of fresh, new material. It was great fun.
Penn Jillette has always seemed to me to be too worried that people won’t think he’s cool.
I can’t speak to the Washington Post Ad, but his comments about Iraq after visiting in a highly publicized visit to a highly cooperative Iraqi government were heavy handed, asinine, and strangely identical to the opinions he had already expressed. Whoever portrayed Sinead when she tore up the picture of the Pope on SNL looked just like her and the Robbins/Sarandon support of Mumia and other issues on which when quizzed they knew next to nothing are all documented on film and in print.
I was irritated by the environmental episode. I’m not a tree hugger by any means, and I’m woefully ignorant on the subject of forestry and ecology, but even I could see through the… well, bullshit they were trying to sell. Among other things they claimed that “there are more trees in America today than there were a century ago!” That may well be true, but it’s not the point: they’re different kinds of trees. The millions and millions of acres of virgin pine forests in the southeast were chopped down and replaced with different faster growing species which DESTROYED the ecosystem that evolved with the pine forests over millions of years and had major ripple effects all over the nation, introduced species have depleted rivers and streams all over the country, etc., and all of this they basically said “Pffft” to. Also, I’m a smoker, but their dismissal of the dangers of second-hand smoke based on the fact that there’s never been a proven case of second hand smoke related lung cancer (which is true- reports saying there were have been discredited) is also bullshit- while there may not be second hand lung cancer, I’m on first name basis with people who’ve had emphysema and heart problems due to second hand smoke. They’re sadly up there with Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Miller and others who claim “We’re tellin’ it like it T.I. Is” when facts bear them out and say “but we’re just entertainers” when they’re exposed (if they say anything at all).
Randi has also tampered with some facts and figures in his time, particularly in a study of dowsing rods some years back. While I applaud his exposing of Popoff and John Edward and Sylvia Browne and Van Praagh, he’s almost as much a fanatic as many of the New Agers he harps on in his militant insistent that the paranormal cannot exist because it cannot be witnessed in a laboratory.
The second hand smoke episode was also the one where they lost me. Their argument on this issue was so pathetic they failed to convince me of something I already believed.
Glad to see I am not the only one who was disenchanted with the second season of Bullshit!.
This is what gets me too. I really try to separate art from the artist, especially because their’s a fair amount of stuff I’d have to give up if I didn’t (call me selfish), but that’s the thing that really pisses me off about most celebrities using their fame to push politics. It’s perfectly understandable that they want to use their influence to push a cause they believe in, but the attitude many of them cop while doing it, especially when a lot of them clearly don’t know anymore than the average person who reads the newspaper, drives me up a wall! :mad:
Remember, 51st State came out at a time of heightened protests at US bases and missiles in the UK. And Maggie Thatcher was practically sucking Reagan’s cock, they were that close.
It was the line about “chemical trucks” that decided me. I see the “White Coats” as lab workers for Monsanto or Pfizer or whatever. It fits in the context of their other, more overtly political songs.
But like I said, I can see where you’re coming from.
I just wanted to add, on a persoanl note, I love the music of Queen.
Even if they did play Sun City, the bastards.
Remember, 51st State came out at a time of heightened protests at US bases and missiles in the UK. And Maggie Thatcher was practically sucking Reagan’s cock, they were that close.
It was the line about “chemical trucks” that decided me. I see the “White Coats” as lab workers for Monsanto or Pfizer or whatever. It fits in the context of their other, more overtly political songs.
But like I said, I can see where you’re coming from.
I just wanted to add, on a personal note, I love the music of Queen.
Even if they did play Sun City, the bastards.
cite?