Can't Get Fooled Again

By Devin McKinney, The American Prospect. Posted July 28, 2004.

Two harrowing hours of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 drew to a close, and we watched as George W. Bush's brain, on display in Tennessee, got lost in the convolutions of an old axiom: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." That's what Bush meant to say; but the logic of the line escaped him, and as it scampered away, the widening silence threatened to admit laughter from the assembled elite. So, famously quick thinker that he is, Bush cut to the chase: "You can't get fooled again."

I wasn't the only one who expected the opening chords of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" to kick in just then, to engulf the theater and bathe the film's open wounds in some cleansing fury. Moore has a knack for musical cues that seem obvious at first but that, set against the accumulation of disgust and demise his films drive toward, curdle into new kinds of sadness or savagery ("Wouldn't It Be Nice" in Roger & Me, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" in Bowling for Columbine). Surely he knew what song was called for. But no: The exit music was Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" – not a great song, in fact something of a headache, however ideologically serviceable.

"Won't Get Fooled Again" not only rocks, it is an epic sneer at leaders, social swindlers, and ideologues of all stripes. It would have lent a dimension of social critique and vigilant skepticism to Fahrenheit 9/11 beyond even the obvious Bush bash that Moore intended. Young's easy, punky rhymes fell in as a dim substitute for something sadder, wiser, fuller, larger. And, despite having been roused by a blame-placing, name-naming populist broadside the like of which has seldom crossed an American movie screen, one was justified in feeling cheated of a great release.

Behind the absence, it turns out, are feuding celebrities and competing narratives. Pete Townshend, Who guitarist and author of "Won't Get Fooled Again," placed a diary entry on his official Web site July 7, claiming that Michael Moore had lately been slandering him. "He says – among other things – that I refused to allow him to use my song . . . because I support the war, and that at the last minute I recanted, but he turned me down," the site reads. Townshend claims that, though low money was the first issue, he ultimately refused Moore's request because he felt "unconvinced" by the filmmaker's previous work. He also admits that "at the beginning of the war in Iraq I was a supporter. But now, like millions of others, I am less sure we did the right thing." (What would Meher Baba have advised?)

Moore has his own version of what went down. Believe whichever side you like. But that Pete Townshend favored the Iraq War and denied use of his music in a film that was bound to inflict some salutary damage on the Bush-Blair axis – while approving its use as theme music for both the CSI series and an allergy medication – should disillusion precisely no one. Not at this late date. For decades now, our pop stars have been sending us political messages that are less mixed than mangled beyond reason.

In 1966, John Lennon came out against the Vietnam War; but a year later, discussing the recent fascist coup in Greece (where The Beatles were preparing to buy an island), he insisted that it didn't worry him "as long as it doesn't affect us." (They never bought the island.) Around the same time, James Brown journeyed to the White House to dine with warmonger Lyndon Johnson; in 1972, the black-pride advocate endorsed Richard Nixon's re-election run (right on!). Linda Ronstadt and Queen, whatever liberating blows they may once have struck for female empowerment or male cosmetics, reaped the rewards of apartheid by playing Sun City against the cultural boycott. Neil Young has flitted from pacifism to Reaganism to anti-corporatism to let's-rollism. The Rolling Stones, who talked a good revolution circa 1968, have turned out to be among the grandest beneficiaries of the very system they once got a chart hit or two out of attacking.

Pop's social politics, like its sexual politics, is at once a flavorful stew of robust contradictions, a slimy pit of self-interest, and a hopeless muddle. But more than anything just now, it is beside the point. Where once it was, as Robert Christgau put it, "an index of vitality" in an artist, his or her political profile is now usually an accessory at best. Does anyone still look to pop stars for help in defining a personal politics? Should we even expect them to define their own politics coherently, given that your typical pop star will be at once a soft liberal, a rapacious capitalist, and a dictatorial control freak? Do we expect or need stars, yesterday's or today's, to second our stance? Who are "we," for that matter, and what is "our" stance?

Christgau asked essentially the same questions in 1969, and though he admitted it was "puritanical to expect musicians, or anyone, to hew to the proper line," he also suggested it was "reasonable to request that they not go out of their way to oppose it." I fear that what seemed a reasonable request 35 years ago seems churlish and outdated today. Rock stars, you see, care about what they care about, when they care about it – be that inconsistent with or utterly contradictory of any previous statement, implied sympathy, or ideological allegiance.

Devin McKinney is the author of 'Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History.'

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