Since Johnny Colla made the post last year on his website concerning the Iraq war, he's subsequently made a few others, including one more directly condemning Bush and imploring everyone to vote. And Huey Lewis has also joined him in making a public endorsement of Kerry on a website devoted to the band. It was fairly mild and reasonable:
Folks-I have never before endorsed a Presidential candidate publicly, nor do I think it's a generally good idea for celebrities to do so, but I'm endorsing John Kerry for President. I think the war in Iraq was ill conceived, has been proven to be a big mistake, and it's time for a new team to try to internationalize the fight against terrorism, and restore respect for the United States. It's so sad to remember that after 9/11 the whole world empathized with us. I don't believe Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld are malicious, but I believe they got it wrong in Iraq, and it's time for a change.
But it unleashed a hornets nest. Whereas I took the presidential endorsements as a huge validation of my own sense of citizenship, others took it as a threat. They wanted the band, it seemed, to occupy a separate space in their lives, far away from mundane political realities.
I could understand a negative reaction by the people who supported Bush (at least the reasonable people – the right wing zealots who essentially damned Huey in immediate response get little sympathy from me) because it's sort of hard to admire someone who seems to be so flawed. Surely he must be flawed if THIS is whom he prefers for President, they must have thought. This isn't a small matter of subjective taste where a difference in opinion is of little consequence. This is an opinion on something much more profound and important. These fans may very well have had the exact opposite reaction I did, but for the very same reasons: while for me the opinion validated his thoughtfulness as an individual, and consequently validated mine, for the Bush supporters it presented a conflict. Either Huey or the Bush-supporting fan, one of them had to have been wrong.
What particularly bothered me, though, in the resulting firestorm on the fan website, were the people who agreed with the choice of candidates but still took umbrage with the public endorsement. Huey had some gall, it seemed, to get involved in something political. He should have known his place and stayed in it, deferentially silent. There were many negative comments in this vein. How dare he do this. "Shut up and sing, Huey," they demanded. They can't have their favorite musicians getting all uppity and having opinions, now, can they...
I suspect, though, that what many of them feared was not the political preference itself but that they were being challenged, by the very focus of their attention no less, to pay attention to something more important than him. Pop culture swallows up an inordinate amount of resources and attention in this country, far more than more crucial things like civic involvement often do. It has its place, but we'd all be better off if the amount of resources devoted to celebrity worship was instead directed to something more meaningful. Perhaps this perceived challenge is what made those fans so defensive, because it caused them to question, whether they were ready to or not, what it meant to them to be a fan and possibly re-evaluate its place if it had consumed more of their life than it should have.
Edited 11/6 and slightly more 11/19.