Protest doesn't rock

MTV has always been a perfect scapegoat for encouraging political apathy in America's youth. When Nine Inch Nails signed on to play "The Hand that Feeds" in front of a photo of President Bush at the MTV Movie Awards, the network seized a perfect opportunity to further disappoint its critics by asking the band to ditch the photo.\nAfter the controversy exploded, a network representative told the Associated Press MTV was "uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement."\nWhat could MTV be afraid of? Nine Inch Nails auteur Trent Reznor said at www.nin.com that it would be "an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush." They only want to sing their opinion, "What if this whole crusade is a charade / And behind it all there's a price to be paid / For the blood on which we dine / Justified in the name of the holy and the divine." That's just Reznor's way of asking Bush for a hug, right?\nI suppose it's still possible to "molest" the photo on stage. NIN guitarist Aaron North is reportedly about as controllable as the Tazmanian Devil. There wouldn't be anything to stop him from, let's imagine, gargling a swig of 151 proof rum, spitting it all over the photo and lighting it on fire. Hey, that sounds fun! Maybe I should be a rock star.\nWhen Nine Inch Nails canceled their appearance, it led many fans to believe the band had been censored for the political statement they wanted to make. After all, any hard-working, God-fearing, patriotic network like MTV would censor anyone who disagrees with Bush's policies, right?\nThere just might be more to this issue than liberal stalwarts are willing to see.\nFirst of all, I have "All the love in the world" for Reznor, but this is a movie award show. We've firmly established that movie award shows tend to be lousy places for making political statements.\nEven worse, if the music is not associated with a movie -- you know, maybe a movie that's nominated for an award on the show -- then it was downright daft for MTV to book Nine Inch Nails in the first place. It only proves that MTV shouldn't even do movie awards.\nMTV did give NIN the option of playing their song without the Bush photo. But anyone who's heard "Head Like a Hole" knows that Reznor would "rather die than give (them) control." It is no surprise that he made the decision to cancel his own appearance.\nIt's probably just as well the gig didn't happen. If they went on national television making an anti-Bush statement, Nine Inch Nails would have become the next Dixie Chicks.\nYes, liberal political protest has become cliché. This is ironic, considering there is a relative absence of popular protest music compared to other times of controversial wars. The sound of protest music is not nearly as cliché as the sound of the pop diva, or gangsta rap. So why is one cliché more popular than the other?\nPolitical protest has not been made cliché by our musicians. It has been made cliché by regular folks who turned liberalism into a bandwagon onto which they jumped just as blindly as those who supported the war. Even now, many of these liberals are blind to the fact that they are, in fact, a minority in this country.\nIt is going to take a much more intelligent approach to political discourse than singing rock songs in front of the President's photo in order to make a difference. It would be far better for Reznor to drop the angsty goth rock image and find something smart to tell TV cameras, in words regular people can identify with. Reznor is a smart man; he could be perfect for the job.