Michael Stipe: "I Love My Country... But I Don't Love Where It Is Right Now"

[babylonsister]

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2203203,00.html

'The fact that we carried on doesn't make us great - just stubborn'

With a new REM album on the way - a good one, this time - Michael Stipe talks to Dorian Lynskey about living up to their own reputation and learning not to strangle people

Friday November 2, 2007
The Guardian

snip//

Another thing one imagines Stipe discusses with the famous friends he doesn't like to mention is the thorny issue of how to be a politically engaged rock star without getting on everyone's nerves.

In the 80s, Stipe waved the flag for pretty much every liberal cause going, including Aids awareness, gun control, the environment and the doomed presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, and his influence was noted. In one of those remarks that must have seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, Al Gore claimed during the 92 campaign that "George Bush is out of time. Bill Clinton and Al Gore will be automatic for the people."

"It's a very rocky and dangerous path," says Stipe, "because you're easily shot down if you come out too strong, or if you're too scattershot, or if you don't know what you're talking about. I think I've gone too far in the past. In the 1980s, I was made to be something that I wasn't and I became dangerously close to being the poster boy of a generation for various social and political ideologies, and I pulled away from that. You figure out the best possible way to present yourself because there is the idea that a pop star has no right to voice their opinion. I just always blandly announce that I was a person before I was a pop star and I'm due my opinion as much as anyone."

During the last election, REM joined the pro-Kerry Vote for Change tour of swing states, playing freshly minted protest songs Final Straw and I Wanted to Be Wrong. Many musicians these days take relish in decrying the Bush administration, but the subject dismays Stipe so much that he buries his head in his hands. "I'm like a cynical optimist and the angriest pacifist in the world," says the head. "I feel like we will rise above this but sometimes it seems very bleak. I love my country so much and I love what it represents. But I don't love where it is right now."

Can he at least savour the schadenfreude of Bush's rapidly evaporating authority? He gives a wan grin. "It's a day late and a dollar short if you ask me - or several billion dollars short."

more...

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2203203,00.html

[CottonBear]

1. Michael Stipe lives in my city here in Georgia and he and the other members of rem do good work

for the environment , our community, the arts and they support local, state and national Democrats and causes. I saw him introduce Al Gore at a huge outdoor campaign event here in Athens back when Clinton nd Gore first ran for office. It was incredibly exciting. Gore and Stipe were both stars that day! The music that was played as Al came onstage was rem's I am Superman!

It was an awesome day for me and the 1,000s of others there! :)

edit: This is exactly how I feel: "I'm like a cynical optimist and the angriest pacifist in the world,"

[babylonsister]

2. That quote explains me to a tee also!

:hi: :thumbsup: