My biggest problem isn’t so much their hypocrisy–millionaire socialsts, puh-leeze-- but that they support bad causes. Hate to break it to you, but being a non-white cop-killer does not equate to being a political prisoner. Abu Mumia Jamal and Leonard Peltier did what they were accused of. They aren’t noble warriors for the people, they’re cop-killers. RATM should be ashamed of supporting them.
Now if RATM had put their energy and their money, especially, into the problems of third-world debt, sweatshop labor in the US, the plight of the US farmer, and prisoners of conscience, I’d have a lot more respect for them.
What I don’t understand is why we would bother to argue over something like this. There is nothing more moronic than a long “This band sucks” “No it doesn’t” “Yes, it does” thread.
While I’m sure the band would appreciate your support, there’s no reason to attack anyone else about it. When it comes to taste, you can only offer your own opinion.
Therefore, let me say this:
I like this band. (And anybody who disagrees with me is a big, fat idiot.)
Hi there, kids. Sorry to be so long gettign back to you, but I was out of town all weekend.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have causes. Yes, I have opinions. I do volunteer work with Amnesty Int’l, Planned Parenthood, and Habitat. I give money to tha above as well as Doctors Without Borders and some others. No, I do not disparage you, DrJ, in any way. No, I do not disparage anyone who gives, contributes, and works for good.
So I guess all of you leaping to defend Zack and RAtM are going to be able to show me something they have actually done? Singing music and having a “cause” is not, in my mind, taking a “strong political stand.”
Or are they actually out working and fighting for justice, instead of singing about it?
Yes, Rage has some good music. Yes, they sing about subjects that should be part of a public discourse. Yes, they raise money for the causes they find important.
So do a lot of bands.
No, they are not gods to be worshipped. They are a music band. That’s ALL. More than anything else, it’s the blind obedience to the cult of personality that bugs me. They’re a BAND. They play MUSIC.
It’s easy, when one is wealthy, to donate money to causes. I assume the members of Rage do so. I certainly hope they play fundraisers to supply with money the causes they support. For that, I respect them. But I simply do not think they are doing enough.
Playing music for a cause, as we saw all too often in the late 60’s and early 70’s, is ultimately merely a feel-good sop and distraction, keeping listeners happy with the notion that they don’t actually have to work to change their world if they can just listen to this great protest music and “really relate.”
With notable and obvious exceptions (such as some of those posting here), rabid RAtM fans are just like any other music fans. They are no more likely to have a cause beyond the music itself than any other music fan. U2 may have made some people aware of some issues in the 1980s, but the vast majority of their fans were simply in it for the music and the fuzzy feeling they got thinking about all those poor people in Soweto and Ireland.
And unless RAtM actively encourages its fan base to actively participate in politics, to volunteer in hospitals and with the homeless, to give their own money to charities, to actually DO something for God’s sake, besides sitting on their asses screaming “this fukkin ROCKS, dood!” . . . unless they use their (unwarranted) power over their flock to encourage activism and discourage apathy, I will continue to label them as form without function, anger without direction, fury without focus, and a band full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
As a matter of fact, they do. Here’s a link to their website.
Here you will find a program they have set up called “Freedom Fighter of the Month,” as well as links to other websites where you can get information on how to do your part.
Also, andros, how can they have what you refer to as “WASP guilt” when Tom Morello and Zack De La Rocha (who’s real name is Benito) are both Latin American?
And goboy, what makes you so damn sure that Peltier and Jamal are guilty of their crimes? Here’s an excerpt from a statement made by Zack before a bennefit concert for Mr. Jamal. i suggest you read the whole thing and get your facts straight:
"Let me say straight up that tonight’s benefit is not to support cop killers, or any other kind of killers. And if there were no question about the guilt of Mumia Abu-Jamal, we would not be holding this concert.
But whether Jamal is guilty, or is himself the victim of an outrageous miscarriage of justice, is precisely what is at issue. . .
We first heard of this case some years back when the Fraternal Order of Police and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole pressured National Public Radio into censoring a Series of commentaries on prison life recorded by Mr. Jamal. Then Pennsylvania prison authorities put Mr. Jamal into punitive confinement as punishment for writing his first book, Live from Death Row, published by Addison-Wesley.
We began to ask ourselves, shouldn’t political dissidents in THIS country enjoy the same rights that the U.S. government demands for political dissidents in Chine or Iran?
When we looked into the case, we found that Mr. Jamal was a prominent radio journalist in Philadelphia. He frequently reported cases of police misconduct on the air and was threatened along with other journalists by then Mayor Rizzo. He had no criminal record, but as we later learned, he had an enormous FBI surveillance file that had been kept on him since he was 15 years old.
His trial in 1982 was nothing short of a travesty. He was denied the funds necessary to hire expert witnesses, his court-appointed attorney did not interview a single witness before putting them on the stand, he was denied the right to represent himself, and then he was barred from attending his own trial when he continued to protest these outrageous acts. Important evidence was withheld from the defense by the police and prosecution. Witnesses were induced to change their testimony. And the state used its preemptory challenges to knock off prospective jurors on the basis of race.
Perhaps the most absurd allegation against Jamal is that he confessed to shooting Officer Daniel Faulkner. Jamal had been shot by Officer Faulkner and was beaten by other police arriving at the scene. Two months later, when Mr. Jamal filed police brutality charges, the police officers who were with him that night suddenly “remembered” that he had confessed. This was accepted by the court, even though the emergency room doctor and written police reports from that evening said that Jamal had made no statement.
We were then shocked to find that when he was granted a hearing on whether his first trial was unfair and whether he should be granted a new trial, this hearing was conducted by the same judge who had conducted the original trial that was in question.
This judge was a former member of the Fraternal Order or Police, and had pronounced more death sentences than any other sitting judge in the country Ü almost all of them on Black defendants.
If that were not enough, when his case went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, we found out that 5 out of the seven justices were endorsed by the FOP in their electoral campaigns for that courts, and most of them brag about receiving various awards by police organizations.
We have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who is a victim of tragedy, including the widows of slain police officers. But we do not feel that the proper answer to tragedy is to inflict injustice on others. We need to base ourselves on fact, not on emotion. And our path to closure should be paved with a search for truth and justice, not a search for revenge against whomever is targeted by the police."
whoa, Diesel. I told you that his DAD is named Benito. He does interesting art and has been encouraged by his son to keep his art and put it where the world can see it instead of burning it (he used to, due to depression).
So I like Rage. Kill me. But you will only martyr me!
Ya know, I don’t really give half a fuck what they stand for. I don’t care what Tool stands for, nor Eminem, nor DMX, nor Korn, nor Staind, nor White Zombie, nor Creed, nor Kid Rock, nor Metallica, nor Marvin Gaye, nor Kenny Wayne Shepard, nor Hole, nor any of the other band or artists I listen to. I like the way the music sounds, I spin that shit. It’s as simple as that. It isn’t as though I have to hang out with them or anything. I don’t see what the big deal is, I really don’t. If you like the music, listen to it. It doesn’t have to be a defining part of your life. It’s just tunes, man, dig it.
Well, serves me right for posting something i (mostly) heard only a half hour after i woke up. Damn you, Diesel! You know you need at least two hours of “wakey time!”
Well it’s already been established that you know absolutely nothing about the band and instead are just eager to sound off with your right-wing censorship bandwagon crap. Zack is Chicano and Tom is mulatto, and they’re the two driving forces behind the band. So I don’t know where you’re getting this “white boy” bullshit from.