Sheryl Crow and her rhinestones were once again in effect Sunday night for the Grammy Awards. You remember the rhinestone anti-war statement emblazoned across her rack at the Academy Awards. This time it was her guitar strap, which read: “NO WAR.” Unfortunately, however, Crow neglected to pull her hair back; most of the time, the strap appeared to read: “WAR.”
Bonnie Raitt, Gwen Stefani, Fred Durst and a number of others joined Crow in an uninformed, minimally educated battalion of anti-war demonstrators. While celebrities are entitled to their views and opinions, including political ones, I’m not sure when they became misled; they believe that the general public is — and should be — concerned with said opinions. CNN, Fox News, and other television news stations unceasingly air interviews, forums, meetings and narratives given by political professionals. These people eat, sleep and breathe the impending war situation. They have been trained to analyze, strategize, and speak on such states of affairs, and should rightly do so on network television. Not as much can be said for people whose profession is to read lines and pretend as if the lines are their own thoughts and feelings. The fact that many celebrities have not completed high school or college additionally renders their opinions invalid.
Rumors have been flying that Grammy Award nominees were instructed not to exhibit anti-war sentiment, and that those who did were in violation of some spoken instruction not to. Sheryl Crow claims she did not wear a shirt similar to the one she sported at the Academy Awards because “the Grammy committees called my manager to see if I was going to show up with any antics.” On the eve of the awards at MTV’s Rock the Vote, Chuck D of Public Enemy expressed his discontent with the alleged instructions given to Grammy nominees. Following his display, however, Grammy Award representatives publicly denied the accusation, adding that winners could articulate as they wished in their acceptance speeches.
The awards show is not the only organization charged with censoring anti-war sentiment. CBS and MTV have refused the advertisements presented by MoveOn.org, an organization calling itself a “grass-roots advocacy group.” MoveOn.org is the same organization that ran the notorious ad that “juxtaposed a little girl pulling petals from a flower against the backdrop of a nuclear explosion” in 1964. MoveOn.org’s president Wes Boyd believes that Viacom, the corporation that owns CBS, MTV, and several other media venues, “is playing fast and loose with the right to free speech” in refusing the ads. Viacom upholds that the organization “didn’t meet the guidelines” for proposing advertisements.
TrueMajority has run into a similar setback. Backed by a number of celebrities, the group wanted to run commercials featuring Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garofalo alongside such political figures as Edgar Peck, who previously served as the ambassador to Iraq. Comedy Central, Fox, CNN and other affiliated stations rejected the ads.
Celebrities need to express opinions in the way other American citizens do. They are free to write, speak, rally, protest and participate in any other means of expressing their views. However, it is completely inane to give their political views special consideration just because they coined a tune, are absurdly beautiful or bore it all for the camera.