Word: antiwar
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Merle Haggard has always had his guitar hardwired to the gutbucket pulse of Middle America. Back in the Vietnam era, he seemed the essence of a historic political migration: white males fleeing the feminized, antiwar, politically correct Democratic Party. He was your basic Reagan Democrat, fully loaded with a resonant, iron-edged voice and the ability to write razor lyrics that stuck in the mind and the craw. His brilliant anthem-Okie from Muskogee-became a rallying cry for those who were disgusted by the "hippies out in San Francisco" smoking marijuana and burning draft cards. His next patriotic volley...
...anyone I've seen on the planet ... and I believed you!" The stage was set for Boxer to point out that the Petraeus effort to train the Iraqi army had failed and to ask, "So why should we believe your optimism now?" But she wandered off into an antiwar diatribe and never got around to asking...
...Michael" sign) and Triumph of the Will (the star lands in a city, meets the locals, attends a rally with guest speakers, then wows the crowd himself). Among the guests are Celeste Zappala, the outspoken mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, and a cadre of antiwar diplomats. At some venues, famous musicians are on hand: Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Steve Earle and Tom Morello, ex of Rage against the Machine...
...suspicious of his relentless self-promotion. The message of the tour, beyond the denunciation of the Bush Administration, is that Captain Mike is America. I'd be curious to know whether Moore funneled all or part of his speaking fees (a reported $50,000 at one venue) to antiwar charities or Democratic coffers. And now he has another source of revenue: this movie, which may receive some theatrical exposure before it's released...
...Vietnam war had a readymade counter-insurgency: the young people who might be drafted to serve in it. This time, the most articulate opponents are not the young people eligible to go to war. It's the ones who came back. The ex-GIs who now serve in antiwar groups are not natural radicals, not lifelong pacifists. They love their dogs. They love their wives (and wish, the ones most severely wounded, that they could make love to them). And they luvvvv the gung-ho war movie Top Gun. They just think the Iraq occupation is a shame...