Crass Recuperation

Once a song is recorded and published, it belongs to the public right?

As most people know, politicians like to have some popular song playing in the background as they approach the podium for a speech. For much the same reason that professional wrestlers have an identifying song blasting from the venue's PA system when they enter the arena and head to the ring, politicians need to build excitement for the canned stump speech they deliver to throngs of supporters. But what happens when the song used is utterly antithetical to the politician co-opting it?

The dumb-ass governor of Wisconsin recently found out. It seems he's been lately wading into battle, with unions and working people of course, to the sounds of Dropkick Murphys' I'm Shipping Up To Boston. Even while AWOL from the actual job and office he is supposed to be occupying he uses the song to convince the big money boys and fascist rubes he is fit to be president in Iowa and California. This college dropout likes to tout his being "unintimidated" but what do you call his strategy of warming up to a band that his supporters were protesting just a few short years ago?

I was able to find a post by the renegade union SEIU reporting the song DKM released in support of the teachers and other civilized Wisconsinites protesting walker's scheme to wreck public education and destroy unions. But it seems most of the backlash by republican cretins calling for a ban or boycott of those union-loving lads from Boston seems to have disappeared down the memory hole. I suppose they needed to alter the past in order to use I'm Shipping Up To Boston as scott walker's fight song. Or is he really so dumb that he just thought this was a cool song from a gangster movie (The Departed) and did not realize this band is one of the most pro-union, pro-working class forces in America?



I mean they put out a tweet explicitly stating "stop using our music in any way...we literally hate you !!! Love, Dropkick Murphys" because, yes Scott Walker deserves hatred for all the hardship he has caused to so many Wisconsinites. But as you can see from the tweeting trolls, blind loyalty to a sycophantic ideologue is a default for angry morons. Right wing authoritarian followers are easy to wind up and vicious when pointed at their out-groups. What exactly do these mouth-breathing supporters of Scotty find appealing in him? I would find it very satisfying if the tweeters who are adamant in telling DKM how much they suck and how they need to keep their politics to themselves and should be "tolerant" showed up at one of their shows and tell DKM fans how they feel.

It is a special kind of arrogance to recuperate one of the few symbols of resistance to free market fundamentalism and use it as a theme song. So no, once a piece of music is recorded and becomes a freely existing packet of 1s and 0s, it is not public property. Hat's off to DKM. Hopefully I will have time in the future to write about how much the Murphys have meant to me since I was introduced to them in 1998, long before the full-court press against unions in Wisconsin kicked off. But I will leave you with my favorite DKM song. I hope my sharing it is in keeping with the spirit it was recorded in. For these are dark days indeed.

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