How Pitiful When Art Gives Way to War

How Pitiful When Art Gives Way to War by Roxanne McDonald

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nigel Lithgoe actually handled the controversy quite adeptly, but the hypocrisy still stings.

Tough sh-t.

Art: the music of John Meyer, “Waiting for the World to Change.”

Art: choreography of a piece that pointed toward LOVE and PEACE instead of hate and killing.

Art: Peace sign t-shirts.

Woooooo. So insulting to have to go into someone else’s backyard and kill her children then have to watch a television show that has dancers dancing for what they believe in. Ooooh, that sure hurts. I’m sure you will need years of therapy.

Callers in to “So You Think You Can Dance?” bitching, being offended, feeling oh so slighted that the show did an anti-war dance.

Yeeeahhh…. And that is wrong… how, again? Or better, what country are we living in?

Interesting that once again the hypocritical, the pro-torturous, the pro-using killing as an answer strong-arms the art world—who is beholden to the nasty politics that make up war and war-mongering.

To be anti-war is not to be unpatriotic, says Nigel, and he is absolutely right.

Those young men and women are in a tough place, as “patriots”: they are willingly giving up their lives and willing to take the lives of strangers, while pacifists will prefer to protect them in another way—by keeping them out of the war.

Just look at a movie like Born on the Fourth of July, a non-fiction-based film, a biographical narrative of Ron Kovic that shows the Vietnam War soldier between a rock and a hard place: spit on for fighting the war, discounted if he chooses not to fight, maimed and paralyzed and virtually useless and discarded after doing just that.

And here’s the real kicker. We protested the Vietnam War. It was not until decades later that the very heads admitted that it was a “mistake”.

We protested and continue to protest the war in Iraq. And again, rather than see the error of ways now, thousands will have to die, lose limbs, lose sanity…and wait as a less than perfectly cared for veteran while they finally decide this war was also a mistake.

Oh, and by the way complainers? The show is televised in the very country you find so great it deserves death-machine

protection: what are we protecting [besides oil and greed]? That abstraction called freedom, which include, doi, as if you haven’t heard this a zillion time, freedom of EXPRESSION.
THAT’s why I love this country. Not because it will do whatever it can to censor an innocuous little (albeit on a hugely popular show) single dance number or, even more absurd, a fashion statement, but because last I heard we were free to think, say, and wear what we damned well pleased.

Again, ironically, with the exception of “HATE speech.” How come that doesn’t go for everyone?

nb Also to acknowledge how Nigel commented that some will say there are some wars that are justified: I agree that were it not for The French and English and Americans arming themselves against the Hitler pig in the 40s, we would likely have had a whole race in Europe completely obliterated.

And I understand (reticently, but get it) that we have responded to terrorism by letting them know we are not to be overtaken, etc. But what exactly are we doing in Iraq now, this many YEARS later? Have we not proved our, or Bush’s points? And are the Iraqis the ones who terrorized our brothers and sisters in the first place? Hmm. I didn’t think so.

And if I have to SAY it, the blah blah opinions above do not blah blah reflect those of any one but me.

SirLinksAlot So You Think You Can Dance links

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