I happened to be in Thailand when the news broke about singer Linda Ronstadt's hasty departure from the Aladdin, and my reaction was shaded a bit by my visit there.
Thais are remarkably gracious and polite. Almost any guidebook will tell you that they are easily offended by a range of behaviors Americans take for granted, like familiar touching. But they also draw from an infinite well of patience, a tenet of Buddhist philosophy.
On guard against my gift for unintended offense, I at first found Ronstadt's remarks, urging patrons at her concert to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, untenable. Composing a column in my head between temple tours, I even rued the outrage I might spark back home by agreeing with the Aladdin that Ronstadt had been paid to sing, not proselytize. Particularly in this age of ripe political polarization, entertainers would do well to stick with the hits and leave the opining to talk-show shouters, I concluded. And shrewd Democrats, it seemed to me, would eschew any opportunity to outrage those crucial "swing voters"—remember the reaction to the angry speeches at Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone's funeral, just before the 2002 election? Apparently the party was thinking along the same lines at last week's convention.
A couple of other personal traits buttress this caution. Over the years, as a critic I've found myself tiring of the often ill-informed polemics of artists. During the culture wars of the 1980s, I defended the right of artists, even grant recipients, to politicize their work, but often found much of the art of that decade, particularly the products of "identity politics," whingeing and simplistic, however much I might have endorsed the ideals behind them. So a part of me wishes at times that artists of all stripes would abandon politics. Say, for instance, actors who run for governor.
But perhaps more to the point, I am a notorious wimp. For whatever reason, I always shy from personal confrontation. Maybe that's why I became a writer, so I could lob brickbats from the shelter of a keyboard. Had I been in the Aladdin audience that night, I would have slid to the floor and slithered out of the room, hoping no one would identify me as a patron of the offending singer.
Lately, though, it would seem this is a wise course for anyone who does not regularly watch Fox News Channel. Perhaps emboldened by that fount of "fair and balanced" analysis, devotees of the right have become increasingly shrill in recent years. Their argument, of course, is that for years they were made to feel uncomfortable, clutching their unpopular political beliefs against a storm tide of unexamined liberalism. Movies and music have become battlefields over precisely this perception. Conservatives are mad as hell, and they're not going to take the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore.
But they also appear to be somewhat frustrated that an equal number of Americans, despite the best efforts of Rupert Murdoch, still do not share their views. And their strategy is to shout down the unbelievers. Traitors! Non-supporters of our troops! Boo and, oh by the way, hiss.
An old friend whose work keeps her on the road told me that she had been complaining about politics at a truck stop when her husband urged her to speak more quietly, lest the good middle-Americans around them take offense. How's that? What country is this, she wanted to know. A little later, she attended a showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 at which one audience member bellowed abuse at the others.
And then Ronstadt got whisked out of the Aladdin for saying kind things about Moore (although apparently she had said some unkind things about her hosts, too). Accounts vary about just how unruly the evening became. You have to imagine, though, that on any other night, the people storming about a casino, hurling drinks and defacing posters would be the ones hustled off the premises.
Look, if you've been a Ronstadt fan for any time, you cannot have been unaware of her politics. And it cannot be much of a surprise that rock stars of the 1960s and 1970s espouse progressivism. But something happened on the road from then to now, and it's not that the rock generation turned conservative. No turn was needed. The children of the '60s might have sung about social justice, but for many of that cohort, the music's only message was personal freedom. Free love, free dope, free me. Stop the war, so I don't have to go. Thus, the original spoiled teens matured into the Me Generation: all me, all the time. It's little wonder that so many of them bought the right's message that they were being oppressed by government, taxes and "welfare queens."
Perhaps conservatives once were discomfited by their liberal brethren, but that's no excuse for trying to intimidate them into silence today. If you can't abide the political sentiments of rock stars, stay home and listen to CDs. No good conservative, certainly, would agree that you have a natural right never to be offended, regardless whether he or she paid for the setting. For those times when your favorite rock stars say disagreeable things, take a cue from my Thai friends, and learn a little patience.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.