Rock stars’ patriotic rip-off

Patriotism isn’t just the last refuge of
scoundrels. It’s also the last
refuge of aging or fading rock stars
struggling to stay relevant.

Take Steven Tyler, lead singer of and
brains behind rock group
Aerosmith.

“We need to go back to the way it was 30
years ago, when everybody had
Grandma and Grandpa, and we were willing
to pass moral judgments about
right and wrong,” Tyler told Detroit Free
Press rock critic Brian
McCollum. In other words, we need to go
back to a good time – before there was Aerosmith, which blurred the
morality of right and wrong.
It’s the last thing you’d expect from
counterculture hero Tyler.

And it’s a bit hypocritical.

I’m glad Tyler – whose band made it big
during the early ’70s amidst
Vietnam War protests – found religion. But
he’s part of the reason many
people never knew both a grandma and a
grandpa on both sides of their
family, much less a father sticking
around. Tyler was a leader in the
casual sex, drugs and disease culture,
which spawned out-of-wedlock
kids – including his own – in single-mother
households. If anything made
America weak, Aerosmith’s attitude – and its socially devastating
consequences of disease and crime – did.

One of Aerosmith’s greatest hits was “Walk
This Way.” But, while Tyler
now “talks this way,” he never walked it.
Speaking of not having both a
grandma and grandpa, Tyler led by example.
His own daughter, Liv, born
out of wedlock to Playboy model Bebe
Buell, didn’t know the identity of
her real father, Tyler, until she was
already growing up. Abandoned by
Tyler, Buell raised Liv with rocker Todd
Rundgren.

And there’s the 14-year-old Seattle fan
Tyler brags about in Aerosmith’s 1997 biography. He got
her parents to sign her over
to him as her guardian. Then, Tyler, her
new “guardian,” got her
pregnant, made her get an abortion, and
dumped her. Grandma and
grandpa, moral judgments about right and
wrong, indeed.

Aerosmith’s self-absorbed, drug-induced
haze of a biography is the story
of Tyler and his band mates snorting
plaster from a wall when the cocaine
ran out, of uppers, downers, assorted
other pills, heroin, coke,
multiple sex partners and multiple
out-of-wedlock and abandoned kids.
It’s a drawn out version of VH-1’s “Behind
the Music,” in which Tyler’s
newly desired “moral judgments about right
and wrong” are laughable.

So, it’s hard to listen to
Tyler’s newfound values when his
old ones – proudly spotlighted for his fans
for over three decades – helped destroy the fabric of American society.

Tyler now thinks “there should be a
mandatory draft … for three
years,” as in Israel. But, strangely,
when there last was a draft,
during Vietnam, no Aerosmith members,
including Tyler, were drafted or
served, though they were all of prime
draft age. When patriotism was
lonely and needed, Tyler was too busy singing,
“Dream On.”

Sept. 11 “brought me to my knees. It
made me change,” Tyler explains.
“We need to get back to some serious
thinking.”

But, are these the true
sentiments of a new patriot “brought to
his knees,” or are they
the words of a now-53-year-old rocker
whose knees are arthritic? Ditto
for his selling ability, with Aerosmith’s
latest CD selling only 2.5
million worldwide. “Not great,” he
admits. Tyler (whose third family
and second wife are now growing older)
must realize that he’s now less
relevant, less hip. And that, with an
endorsement deal for Dodge
– read, minivans – he’s now hawking
uncool transportation and less
cool music to women who were once his wild
groupies, but are now
patriotic, settled-down soccer moms with
kids and flags. That explains Tyler’s new advocacy of
“flags in school, children
respecting their hometown.”

Then there’s Tyler’s buddy, “Kid Rock,”
a.k.a. Bob Ritchie.

At a
Saturday video shoot in Detroit for his
soon-released new CD, Ritchie
instructed fans appearing in the video to
wear and sport flags and red,
white and blue. But the patriotism of
Ritchie – the self-styled “Pimp
of the Nation,” who likes to give the
one-finger salute in every
publicity shot and toured the country in
his “White Trash on Dope
Tour” – rings hollow (even with his
entrance via star-spangled monster
truck). It’s less than patriotic to use
the Michigan chapter of
crime-prone “Outlaw Biker Gang” as
security. “He respects us more than
anyone else in this town,” said a
tattoo-covered gang-member.

Ritchie is another rocker with an
unthrilling new CD, whose patriotism
seems little more than a marketing tool,
especially considering the
damage he creates as role-model for
American kids. The scion of a
wealthy car dealer, he’s an admitted
former drug-dealer and crack-user,
who fathered a kid out of wedlock with a
woman he says was a drug
dealer. In his phony working-class,
trailer-park act, Ritchie praised
“Bill Clinton … a [expletive] pimp. … The guy’s my hero.” This
is patriotism?

Or this? “I’m a pimp. You can check my
stats . … Smack all the hos.” Or, “Because I do so much pimpin’,
one day I’ll probably walk with a limp … one day, watch, I’ll be
the pimp of the nation.”

Or, “I be the early-mornin’ stoned pimp,
straight-limpin’, Boone’s Farm-drinkin’, at the party big-booty
pinchin’.”

Patriotism isn’t just about waving a flag and supporting a war. It’s
about doing what’s good for America in peacetime, too, and these rockers
haven’t.

P.T. Barnum said there’s a sucker born
every minute. Fall for Steven
Tyler’s and Kid Rock’s strange new
patriotism and count yourself in the
Barnum-specified gene-pool.