The slutroversy, initially between a thirty-year-old law
student and a rotund radio host, now embroils the president of the
United States, Sleep Train mattress retailers, the ladies of
The View, and a certain Canadian power
trio.
We always knew it would come to this: a copyright battle
between Rush and Rush. Who guessed it would be over music and not
brand names?
After indelicately pondering aloud what kind of a woman
would demand free birth-control pills from her Catholic school,
Rush the talk host launched into Rush the band’s “Spirit of the
Radio” as bumper music. The overanalyzed controversy thus sparked a
sideshow overlooked by all but the authors of the overplayed song.
Rush is outraged to be associated with Rush. This is to say that
the Canadians are mad at the Missourian. One likes to believe in
the freedom of music, but Rush — the arena-rock staples — just
won’t have it.
“The public performance of Rush’s music is not licensed
for political purposes and any such use is in breach of public
performance licenses and constitutes copyright infringement,”
Rush’s legal representative Robert Farmer wrote Rush. “There are
civil and criminal remedies for copyright infringement, including
statutory damages and fines.” The lawyer added that “we hereby
demand that you immediately stop all use of Rush’s music and
confirm that you will do so.”
Like Limbaugh’s degrading comments, the legal missive
would have been better left unsaid. Music acts wear meat dresses,
puts spikes through their noses, and destroy their instruments all
to get played on the radio. Rush — the “Closer to the Heart” guys,
not the Excellence in Broadcasting one — exuding a nerdy regular
guy vibe, have never really gone for such dramatics. But it’s hard
not to see a public lawyer-letter ostensibly geared toward pulling
their song from the radio as a clever PR stunt, too. The
attention-grab echoes with the sounds of salesmen. And besides,
radio broadcasters license such songs without forfeiting their
speech rights, political or otherwise.
There is a flipside to “Shut up and sing!” that those
invoking the sage advice rarely consider. Asking performers to mind
their art and not our politics implies that the audience should
mind the performer’s art and not the politics, too. People
demanding that the government tell churches to pay for their
contraceptives are perhaps incapable of limiting their politics.
But this should come natural to advocates of limited
government.
Wisely tuning out the political screeches of a Sean Penn
or a Matt Damon drifts into idiocy when we also tune out their
fine-crafted acting because of their poorly-developed political
ideas. They sometimes make it difficult to see their characters
through the haze of their very public political personae. But we
should at least attempt to leave our own political baggage at the
theater door — even if ideologically incontinent actors can’t do
the same.
Liberals increasingly mistake ideological solidarity for
funny (Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo, Jon Stewart), get seduced by
anti-corporate corporate marketing (Apple, Whole Foods, Starbucks),
and view propagandistic films flattering their sensibilities as
high art (Avatar, The Cider
House Rules, The Kids Are All
Right). We don’t defeat liberals by becoming
them.
Taking political cues from artistic heroes makes as much
sense as taking artistic cues from political heroes. This is a
totalitarianism of the soul, in which politics dominates
everything. Rush Limbaugh is the undisputed king of talk radio. But
if you like listening to Manheim Steamroller because the man behind
the mic that you like to listen to listens to Manheim Steamroller
then you are truly sad. Dittoes, Megadittoes even, for Rush the
band. The quality of their music isn’t influenced for better or
worse because they have uncourageously swung at a talk show host
once he has become a human piñata. Such endless compromises shatter
the illusion of integrity. Alas, some entertainers are sluts for
publicity.
It would be a shame if Rush’s musical boycott of Rush’s
broadcasts leads to listeners of Rush (the AM talker) ceasing to be
listeners of Rush (the FM rockers). “Red Barchetta,”
“Subdivisions,” “The Pass,” and “Tom Sawyer” remain on the radio
decades after we first heard them for good reason. The same is true
of Rush Limbaugh.
Rush, like Rush, are very good at what they do. A boycott for a
boycott leaves the whole world broke.
