Hate President Bush ? Got a new record out ? The Today Programme can meet all your UK publicity requirements – just ask Patti Smith.
Presenter (RealAudio) – “Ry Cooder, I’ve never heard of you, but our editor listened to ‘Bop Till You Drop’ a lot back in 1980. Would you like five minutes to abuse President Bush ?”
Cooder – “Why, thank you … I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hate George Bush … two stolen elections … America is a junk-food diner and Bush is the head waiter …”
Presenter – “Thank you very much”
The above may not be a verbatim transcript. But it ‘illustrates a wider truth’.
UPDATE – commenter anonanon offers up some more of Today’s Greatest Hits:
“Which historical figures make President Bush look good by comparison ? The Ceasars, Hitler, Stalin – that’s, anyway, according to the composer Randy Newman whose latest song ‘A Few Words in Defence of Our Country’ has just been released on iTunes. He spoke to our reporter Sanchia Berg …”
“That was a Burt Bacharach song. The king of easy listening music has joined the ranks of musicians queuing up to write anti-George Bush songs …”
“But what makes a great protest song ? One man who should know is the singer-songwriter John Prine. He wrote one of America’s best-known anti-Vietnam war songs. 35 years on he’s turned his attention to Iraq. Mark Coles caught up with him on his British tour …”
Tim even if Bush had won by a large margin the election could still have been ‘stolen’. As here in Australia when the conservatives win in a landslide, the leftists always accuse them of ‘playing the race card’ or ‘appealing to the lowest common denominator’. ‘We wuz robbed I tells yuh!’
You can’t win fairly against fanatics. They’re always right, even when they’re wrong.
I adore the work of Ry Cooder but I accept that this is a minority interest for north London liberals like myself. The fact that he has a new record out and is anti-Bush simply isn’t a story by anyone’s news values. If, like Neil YOung, for example, he had suddenly turned Republican, now that would have been musical man biting political dog.