Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World

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Notes

¹  < http://www.icasualties.org/oif/> (accessed November 25, 2006).

²  < http://www.iraqbodycount.net/> (accessed November 24, 2006).

³  < http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1770569.htm> (accessed October 31, 2006).

⁴ Sabrina Tavernise, “Civilian Death Reaches New High in Iraq, U.N. Says,” The New York Times, November 23, 2006, p. A1.

⁵ For competing views of challenges that cultural politics presents for US progressives, see Thomas Frank, “What's the Matter with Liberals?” The New York Review of Books 52 (May 12, 2005), pp. 46–51; Slavoj Zizek, “Over the Rainbow,” London Review of Books 26 (November 4, 2004), p. 20; Thomas B. Edsall, “The Struggle Within,” The New York Times (November 25, 2006), p. A27.

⁶ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 12.

⁷ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 193, 192.

⁸ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 194.

⁹ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 229.

¹⁰ Quoted in Stephen Smith-Said, “Why Neil Young is Wrong,” The Progressive 70 (July 2006), p. 32.

¹¹ Quoted in Stephen Smith-Said, “Why Neil Young is Wrong,” The Progressive 70 (July 2006), p. 32.

¹² John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992); Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, [1964] 1991), p. 64.

¹³ Steve Earle, El Corazón (Warner Brothers Records, 1997), track 1.

¹⁴ I don't mean to overstate the political impact of these artists, which was largely due to the fact that their efforts coalesced with mass-based political movements. This is notably lacking for current dissident musicians. Jenny Toomey and Rob Rosenthal, “Music for Change,” The Nation 280 (January 31, 2005), p. 14; Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

¹⁵ Jeff Chang, “‘Stakes is High’: Conscious Rap, Neosoul and the Hip Hop Generation,” The Nation 276 (January 13/20, 2003), pp. 17–21.

¹⁶ I am referring to Jackson's “Nation Time” speech at the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.

¹⁷ David Corn, “Death-House Troubadour,” The Nation 265 (August 25/September 1, 1997), pp. 34–36.

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1965).

¹⁹ See Hannah Arendt, “Lying in Politics,” Crises of the Republic (New York: Harvest/HBJ Book, 1972).

²⁰ To be fair, Earle, who lives in Nashville, has explained that he wrote the song after Rice spoke at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. See Jim Derogatis, “Combat Rock,” Harp Magazine 3 (September/October 2004), p. 105.

²¹ See Michael Franti and Wonder Knack, Food for the Masses: Michael Franti—Lyrics and Portraits (New York: Random House, 2006). I owe the reference and the thought to Devon Lougheed, although he is not responsible for my use of it. Franti also has recently done a film, “I Know I'm Not Alone,” documenting his visit to war zones in Iraq, Palestine, and Israel, and his song by that name is on Yell Fire!

²² Emilio Esteves's new film, “Bobby,” on the last day in the life and presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, plays to the same impulse. Actor William Macy, who is in the film, recently commented, “We've been ill-served by our politicians for many years. We need a new Bobby Kennedy. We need somebody to stand up. We need a leader.” Macy, quoted in Gayle MacDonald, “Is Emilio Back?” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 23, 2006, p. R4.

²³ Josh Tyrangiel, “In the Line of Fire,” Time Magazine, May 21, 2006, CNN.com available online at: < http: www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,119641,00.html>.

²⁴ Their story is well told in Barbara Kopple's new film, “Shut Up and Sing.”

²⁵ “Dems Battle over Confederate Flag,” November 2, 2003, CNN.com, available online at: < http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/01/elec04.prez.dean.confederate.flag> (accessed November 9, 2006).

²⁶ Clayborne Carson, “Parting the Country,” Dissent 45 (1998), p. 111; Frank, “What's the Matter with Liberals?”

²⁷ Available online at: < http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2006/general/by_state/sen_gov/MI.html?SITE = NPR&SECTION = POLITICS&TABULATE = 1>.

²⁸ Tamar Lewin, “Michigan Rejects Affirmative Action, and Backers Sue,” The New York Times, November 9, 2006, p. P16.

²⁹ “Survey of Voters: Who They Were,” The New York Times, November 9, 2006, p. P7.

³⁰ See Colin Kidd, “‘My God was Bigger than His,’” London Review of Books (November 4, 2004), pp. 15–18; Tim Wise, “What's the Matter with White Folks?: Racial Privilege, Electoral Politics and the Limits of Class Populism,” LiP Magazine 3 (Spring 2005); available online at: < http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/feat_wise_whitefolks_p.htm>.

³¹ I owe this point to Carleton Gholz.

³² Langston Hughes, “Let America be America Again,” quoted in Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 1492–Present, revised and updated edition (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), pp. 395–396.

³³ “Survey of Voters,” p. P7; Jenny Toomey and Rob Rosenthal, “Music for Change,” The Nation 280 (January 31, 2005), p. 14.

³⁴ Mark Crispin Miller, “Who Controls the Music? The National Entertainment State III,” The Nation 265 (August 25/September 1, 1997), pp. 11–16; Jenny Toomey, “Empire of the Air,” The Nation 276 (January 13/20, 2003), pp. 28–30.

³⁵ Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (ed.), Trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. xviii–xix.

³⁶ Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (ed.), Trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 106.

³⁷ The new CD by the leftist US punk group Anti-Flag, For Blood and Empire, is notable. Made for RCA (a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which is also the Dixie Chicks' parent company), the album includes defiant, anti-imperialist, anti-media monopoly tracks such as “The Press Corpse,” “The Project for a New American Century,” “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” and “The W.T.O. Kills Farmers.” The CD package contains a series of pointed radical political essays to complement the song lyrics.

³⁸ The new CD by the leftist US punk group Anti-Flag, For Blood and Empire, is notable. Made for RCA (a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which is also the Dixie Chicks' parent company), the album includes defiant, anti-imperialist, anti-media monopoly tracks such as “The Press Corpse,” “The Project for a New American Century,” “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” and “The W.T.O. Kills Farmers.” The CD package contains a series of pointed radical political essays to complement the song lyrics, p. 106.

³⁹ The new CD by the leftist US punk group Anti-Flag, For Blood and Empire, is notable. Made for RCA (a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which is also the Dixie Chicks' parent company), the album includes defiant, anti-imperialist, anti-media monopoly tracks such as “The Press Corpse,” “The Project for a New American Century,” “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” and “The W.T.O. Kills Farmers.” The CD package contains a series of pointed radical political essays to complement the song lyrics, p. 106.

⁴⁰ The new CD by the leftist US punk group Anti-Flag, For Blood and Empire, is notable. Made for RCA (a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which is also the Dixie Chicks' parent company), the album includes defiant, anti-imperialist, anti-media monopoly tracks such as “The Press Corpse,” “The Project for a New American Century,” “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” and “The W.T.O. Kills Farmers.” The CD package contains a series of pointed radical political essays to complement the song lyrics, p. 109.

⁴¹ Bobby McFerrin recorded the song “Don't Worry Be Happy” in 1988.

⁴³ Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 73.

⁴² Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 72.

⁴⁴ See Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can't Dissent,” in Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds), Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler (New York: Norton, 1997).

⁴⁵ See Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can't Dissent,” in Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds), Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler (New York: Norton, 1997).

⁴⁶ Melissa A. Orlie, “Political Capitalism and the Consumption of Democracy,” in Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 151–153.

⁴⁷ Frank, “Why Johnny Can't Dissent”; Chang, “‘Stakes is High’”; Smith-Said, “Why Neil Young is Wrong,” pp. 32–33.

⁴⁸ Relatedly, Riley says of his intended audience, “I assume that you agree with me. I don't think the problem starts with you. I think it makes my music less preachy and it allows me to just talk about the regular things I go through.” See Ann Powers, with Eddie Vedder, Boots Riley, Amy Ray, Carrie Brownstein, and Tom Morello, “The Power of Music,” The Nation 276 (January 13/20, 2003), p. 15.