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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Bush-bashers are hoping that entertainment celebrities will turn out crucial first-time voters. But the audiences aren't sold.
Dec 5, 2003 | Janeane Garofalo strolls across a Boston stage, feeding anti-Bush humor to about 1,000 seated fans. As the host of the Tell Us the Truth tour that's taking aim at media consolidation and free trade -- with Audioslave's Tom Morello, Billy Bragg and Steve Earle doing the musical heavy lifting -- Garofalo is about two hours into the show and she's clearly warmed up. After attacking Bush's "war on the English language" and his war in Iraq, she moves on to new material and a new target: Bush supporters.
"Every time someone says, 'I'm a George Bush Republican, I hear them saying, 'I'm a dick,'" she says.
As for the so-called red states that voted for Bush, well, says Garofalo, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, "I call them the 'pee-on-me states.'" The level of self-loathing required to vote for George W. Bush, she says, calls for a drastic solution. "We should hire a dominatrix -- just to get it over with."
The audience response, though, is decidedly mixed. An enthusiastic shout of "he is crazy" comes from the front, but then I spot a few people standing up to leave. A tall woman with red hair, standing near the exit, tells me that she's had enough musical activism for the night.
"Something in that room doesn't really represent how I feel," says Helen Sheldon, 30, an Aveda salesperson. "I'm very far left, but [Garofalo's] jokes were representing exactly what I don't like about the Bush administration. She didn't have any facts to back up what she was saying; it was uneducated and pompous." Two other women say that they are also fleeing in protest -- but not because they've been offended by Garofalo. "I enjoyed her," says Melissa Perkins, 26. "We just wanted more information about how to be more involved."
Millions of dollars, big egos and an election are wrapped up in large-scale liberal entertainment tours aimed mainly at bringing the 18- to 30-year-old voter to polls next November. In addition to Tell Us the Truth, events are being planned by Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit rallies, the now veteran Rock the Vote, Punkvoter.com and Norman Lear's multimillion-dollar Declare Yourself -- not to mention invariable celebrity testimonials for specific candidates. With the election less than a year away, the left has become dependent not just on celebrity money, but also action. Today, pop culture and Democratic politics are more unified than Outkast. Even once-complacent stars such as Jay-Z, Natalie Maines, Dave Matthews and Drew Barrymore are giving their time and reputations to liberal causes.
But in interviews with more than 30 fans attending the Tell Us the Truth tour in New York and Boston, two criticisms repeatedly emerged. First, concert-goers were turned off by the shrillness of the political rhetoric. Second, they wanted to know how to become more politically active; they weren't content with simply being in the audience. Such is the tricky challenge for today's political stars: satisfy large, diverse crowds -- from radicals to skittish new converts -- and productively turn the experience into action, all without getting in the way of an entertaining show.
Can the stars pull it off -- and if they do, will it make a difference? Absolutely, says Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager: "Their ability to get out the vote could make the difference in the upcoming election, which is going to be close." And yet, if informal polling of young fans is to be believed, pop politics still has a lot to learn. Tell Us the Truth may be a sincere first attempt, but it's also a warning to other tours heading out on the road: Bush-bashing, acoustic guitars and a few petitions might not be enough to galvanize a youth movement.
Tell Us the Truth began as an attempt to lobby against media consolidation. In March, Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, a Washington nonprofit focused on musicians' rights, tried to persuade Billy Bragg to play a November media conference in Madison, Wis. When his manager suggested something broader, the idea for the tour was born. Globalization was included both because the cause appealed to Bragg and because the Free Trade of the Americas meetings (and protests) would be taking place in Miami only a few weeks after the tour started. "It seemed to make a lot of sense to us," says Toomey. "It seemed like it fit together."
The other artists, Steve Earle, Jill Sobule, Lester Chambers, Boots Riley from the Coup and Audioslave's Tom Morello, generally agreed, as did the key funders, the AFL-CIO and Common Cause, a liberal lobbying organization in Washington. Both groups had already lobbied against corporate globalization and media consolidation, respectively; supporting the tour made sense.
Over the course of the three-week tour, however, the message moved beyond these two issues. Earle, Morello and Bragg agreed to play the same number of songs -- five, six or seven -- but otherwise artists had complete freedom to sing and speak. Many focused their attention on Bush's litany of failures, from Iraq to poverty and the environment. Even before Garofalo joined the tour in Philadelphia, "We all let our freak flag fly," says Morello, who played solo. "It's just a matter of what works, what you feel like playing. This tour is really a way of finding out how to do this."
Morello, like the other artists, tried to do more entertaining than preaching. He avoided his darkest songs, and occasionally skipped political speeches. (In New York, he did take time out to tell the crowd that, according to a friend in Baghdad, "Every man, woman and child said, 'We want every damn American to get the hell out of here.'")
The musical mix also morphed and changed. Mike Mills of R.E.M. played a set in Indianapolis; Jill Sobule added her heartfelt humor to the tour in Philadelphia. Riley, a rapper and spoken-word poet, also "really shook things up," says Bragg. Along with inspiring Bragg to go electric, he brought a hip-hop element to the show that was otherwise lacking. When he agreed to stay beyond the four shows he'd signed up for, the show became less folky. "He kept us from being Crosby, Stills and Nash," Bragg says.
But not completely. Even with Riley, the shows in New York and Boston were dominated by solo acoustic sets, mellow songs and angry protest. Earle, after playing songs like "John Walker's Blues," typically spoke about economic inequality. Morello mixed talk of the Miami protests with songs reminiscent of Johnny Cash, while Garofalo hurled insults at Fox News, Bush, Cheney and all Republicans.
When I caught up with the performers at the New York show's after-party, in the VIP balcony of Webster Hall -- where Woody Guthrie's grandson was also hanging out -- they all seemed happy with the mix. Morello told me, between plastic cups of Jameson, that "tonight felt electric." Garofalo said that she saw in the crowd "that look of 'we can have a better life, we can work toward social justice'" -- a thought that was no doubt encouraged by the after-party experience, where fans praised the stars before asking for autographs.
But whatever the source, their optimism is not unique. Other artists who are digging into politics this year sound equally sure of their own influence. When I interviewed Dave Matthews before Thanksgiving, he said that stars and fans are already moving toward "a point at which there's just a general outrage." Russell Simmons told me in person and on the phone that politics is now "in style" for young people, while Moby, co-founder of MoveOn.org's anti-Bush ad contest, argued that "it's not like we have to convince people that Bush is a bad man. All we have to do is tell the truth."
Beltway strategists are also confident in the power of celebrity influence over the much-hyped first-time voter, the 18- to 30-year-olds who didn't vote in the last election. Already "there has been an awakening that, A) the election matters and B) they can affect the outcome," says Michael Feldman, a former senior advisor to Al Gore who now consults for Norman Lear's Declare Yourself campaign. With celebrities pushing them toward the polls, says Feldman, young people have the potential to become a powerful voting bloc, not unlike the ballyhooed soccer moms of 1996. NOFX's Mike Burkett (aka Fat Mike) agrees. He says that he founded Punkvoter.com because he believes that music and its fans can keep Bush from reelection.
Young fans, however, won't necessarily be easy to convince.
