Wake Me Up When They Actually Put Any Income at Risk
Zack de la Rocha has issued a statement on behalf of an organization called the Sound Strike urging music fans and fellow artists to boycott Arizona "to stop SB 1070," which he labels an "odious" law.
Among those artists joining de la Rocha's boycott are Conor Oberst, Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, Joe Satriani, Sonic Youth, Tenacious D, Street Sweeper Social Club and Michael Moore.
So it turns out that at the local Best Buy here in Phoenix, Arizona, I find many examples of these folks' work still for sale. Moore's videos, for example, still seem to be available for purchase. Possibly their requests to have their merchandise removed from store shelves in Arizona have not reached the sales floor yet, but my guess is that these guys have absolutely no intention of actually pulling their product from Arizona stores. My guess (and please tell me if I am being unfair) is that most of these folks, at best, are committing to cancel tour dates that for most of these bands are not even scheduled yet. This is about as much of a sacrifice as me promising to cancel my next date with Gisele Bündchen. This kind of statement is the moral equivalent of Hollywood stars who decry global warming from the steps for their private jet.
I think folks know I am a proponent of open immigration, and so, as in the war on drugs, I don't condone adding more government powers to enforce a pointless prohibition. But there are many folks here who have supported far more authoritarian legislation than the AZ immigration law. For God sakes in Sicko Michael Moore wrote a long love note to Castro's Cuba.
Dr. T:
Interesting choice of desired date:
Bundchen, who is known throughout the beauty industry as an astute businesswoman, last year [2007], insisted on being paid in any other currency but the US dollar.
-- http://www.TopNews.in 09/04/2008
Seem as though she anticipated a dramatic decline in the US economy. That shows she's wiser than most economists and 99.9% of our D.C. politicians.
May 26, 2010, 3:39 pmMichael:
Many of the top international models switched to wanting Euros. It could be astute, or just going with the crowd.
May 26, 2010, 8:34 pmrobert61:
Cheap signalling. It's good for their rep, which is good for business. There's no downside. You can't even definitively call them hypocrites, because after all, what does "boycotting Arizona" even mean? Evidently not pulling out of the Arizona market...
May 27, 2010, 2:21 amMax:
Wouldn't pulling out of the Arizona market not hurt immigrants more than the "racists"? So, I can understand why they don't wanna do it aside of losing a lot of money ;)
May 27, 2010, 5:45 amWell, pulling out of the dollar and going into the euro definitely wasn't the best of ideas! There are better currencies like Kronen, Swiss Franken or even Chinese Renminbi (which incidentially would only go up up up)...
Jens Fiederer:
To be fair, I highly doubt that the artists have any ABILITY to order Walmart to pull their products off the shelf - they would be constrained by contracts with their studios/publishers, etc. Even if they weren't, I'm pretty sure (IANAL, though)there is no reasonable way to stop a merchant from purchasing CDs in Texas and then selling them in Arizona.
Not booking concerts there is pretty much all they CAN do.
May 27, 2010, 6:32 amRon H.:
"The website includes a petition urging President Barack Obama to take action."
"Arizona's new law is an assault on the US Constitution..."
LOL! That's really funny. They're calling on Obama to defend the Constitution? They're seriously misguided.
May 27, 2010, 1:09 pmSteve:
"The website includes a petition urging President Barack Obama to take action."
"Arizona's new law is an assault on the US Constitution..."
LOL! That's really funny. They're calling on Obama to defend the Constitution? They're seriously misguided.
May 27, 2010, 7:22 pmRon H.:
I wonder why Steve is repeating my comment?
May 27, 2010, 9:21 pm