LUDIC LOG

The "culture wars" in America follow a predictable pattern. Some cultural artifact, often marginal in importance and created by an unpopular or fringe artist, is discovered by someone with whatever are passing for traditonal moral views at the time; that person and their ideological doppelgangers hold the artifact forth as an exemplary specimen of the dangerous rot that permeates our culture these days, regardless of how relatively obscure it may be; the media, ever desperate for an eyeball-catching headline, pick up the 'story' (if the opinions of a handful of people with no critical training, ability or skill on a given piece of art can be considered a story); conservative pundits and opportunistic politicians take the bogus issue and run with it, often totally distorting the tone, treatment and specifics of the cultural artifact along the way; and, eventually, noble-minded liberals and civil rights fans offer half-hearted and misguided defenses of the artifact which serve only to overshadow the art and remove it even farther from the vantage point necessary to contemplate it. Generally speaking, the majority of the people who have an opinion either way on the subject have not seen/heard/experienced the artifact under indictment and are often quite proud of that fact. Fewer still have understood it. But in the end, a lot more people will end up buying it than would have had the tempest not raged.

This is about to happen again, with country singer Steve Earle's song "John Walker's Blues", which is told from the perspective of the 'American Taliban', John Walker Lindh. A number of Nashville music insiders and commentators on the country scene have already taken stabs at the song, saying that writing it is an unconscionable decision in light of recent events, saying that it's career suicide for the extremely talented but troubled Earle, saying that to sing such a song is tantamount to spitting in the face of the victims. Tabloids like the New York Post have also bared their knives at the politically rambunctious Earle, calling him a traitor, a coward, a moral monster and all the other high-handed condemnatory rhetoric that they save for people who create art they don't happen to like. And if more than a week goes by without half a dozen conservative pundits and at least one politician weighing in on the 'controversy', it will be shocking indeed. The handful of people willing to risk defending such a horrendous artistic faux pas have also spoken out, with responses ranging from the self-congratulatory (Earle is speaking out against the kind of anti-dissent attitudes I fancy myself the victim of) to the begrudgingly practical (Earle may have done something terrible, but we have to defend his right to do so). I would be willing to bet that almost none of these people have actually heard the song.

I haven't either, but I'd like to. The lyrics are touching, the lament of a confused and disgraced young man who's been let down by everything he ever believed in; and Steve Earle is one of the few genuinely talented people in the sad, decaying commercial swamp that my beloved country music has become. However, like those who boast that they don't have to read a book to know it's morally repugnant, I don't have to hear a song to know that it should be defended, and not timidly and reluctantly defended but vociferously and absolutely defended; it doesn't matter what the song is about. Our laws, first of all, could not be more clear-cut on this issue; Earle has an absolute and unimpeachable right to any artistic expression he chooses, no matter how controversial it might seem to be, and so does anyone else. This is not even at issue, and the fact that it's constantly being debated shows what a fundamental lack of understanding exists in this country of the rights we defend against the likes of the Taliban. It's downright annoying to have to hear people on both sides of the issue constantly say "well, he has the right to say what he's saying...". Of course he does. That's the foundation of our Constitution. Harping on it constantly, as if people need to be constantly reminded, is a disgraceful comment on how ignorant we are of our own heritage. But more importantly, protected speech doesn't just provide for this sort of art; it demands it. A guarantee of free speech and free expression invites the most extreme and unpopular forms of speech and expression; that's the whole point. For people to express shock, outrage and disdain when people take advantage of protected speech is naive and juvenile. It's pointless to protect popular, acceptable and widely-held expressions; those are never the ones that need protecting.

There are plenty of other reasons to be dismayed at the impending outrage over "John Walker's Blues", most of them artistic: the sad fact that the American public seems as dead as ever to irony; the inability of people to distinguish between expressing a viewpoint and agreeing with that viewpoint, and further to distinguish between understanding something and condoning it; the staggering ignorance of nuance, perspective and metaphor present in criticism of the song, and the nearly incredible notion that people seem not to know that a story can be told in voices other than that of the storyteller; the fatuous notion that art must be created to please the public and not the passion of the creator; and the dismal, foolish belief that art must be about pleasant, happy topics, an attitude that betrays a complete lack of understanding of the fact that art is almost inevitably an outgrowth of dissatisfaction and pain. But all this will be lost; it won't even be discussed. Words of abstract, misinformed condemnation and abstract, misinformed support will be exchanged by the millions for a few weeks, as they were for The Last Temptation of Christ and Lolita and The Slim Shady LP and a thousand cultural objects before it. And Steve Earle, like a thousand artists before him, will be forever remembered, and not fondly, for daring to create the kind of art that his country invited him to create.