Lame-duck Wingnut Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) is asking for your help in retiring his campaign debts in the wake of his unsuccessful Senatorial run against Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell. Nothing unusual there, nothing worthy of a snarky Vern post.
Except for a little detail at the end of the Talking Points Memo story (in which he also refuses to say whether or not he still thinks Carly will be a “long slow trainwreck” who is “all sizzle and no steak” as he had earlier contended) :
In a twist, DeVore told TPMDC that he’s actually paid off campaign bills but the debt stems from Don Henley’s copyright lawsuit. Henley challenged DeVore’s parodies of his songs for campaign ads titled “Hope of November,” a knock off of “The Boys of Summer,” and “All She Wants to Do is Tax” instead of “All She Wants to Do is Dance.”
DeVore said the lawsuit could stretch into August, and of course, cost more money along the way. “This could go on for awhile,” he said.
Really, what is it with so-called Conservative Republicans and their disrespect for the intellectual property of musicians, combined with their goofball determination to wrap themselves in the hipness and energy of popular music? It’s really been a longstanding pattern, which was documented a couple weeks ago in an entertaining and thorough story, also from Talking Points Memo, which I hereby steal (and return to my hard work preparing my big project declaring Orange a “Ruled By Clowns City” this Tuesday…) :
“Stop the Music! Artists Demand GOPers Quit Playing Their Hits” by Eric Kleefeld, 6/7/2010
If stereotypes held true, you would think that the Republicans would be the ones telling folks to turn that blasted music down. But this year — and indeed in many past election cycles — it’s the GOP that has been attracting cease-and-desist letters for pilfering music against the artists’ wishes. So let’s take a look at some of the more notable GOP music fails from this cycle, and cycles past.
Senate candidate Chuck DeVore (R-CA) got burned for using for using altered-lyric version of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” and “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” for his campaign’s Web ads. David Byrne is suing Gov. Charlie Crist (I-FL) for using “Road To Nowhere” in a Web ad during his previous Republican Senate primary fight, and of course, as we reported yesterday, Rush cut to the chase and told Senate nominee Rand Paul (R-KY) to stop playing “Tom Sawyer” and “The Spirit of Radio.”
The Orleans song “Still The One” has a special place in politics as it has been used not once without the band’s permission, but twice — and the first instance contributed to its author’s entrance into national politics. In 2004, the Bush campaign used the song at a rally. As the song’s main author, John Hall, told MSNBC in 2008: “George Bush was busy campaigning on an ‘ownership society,’ yet never asked me, the band, or the publishers for permission.” Hall and other stakeholders in the song quickly sent a cease-and-desist letter, and the Bush campaign dropped the song.
In 2006, Hall went on to be elected to Congress as a Democrat, defeating an incumbent Republican — an event that was spurred in part by his experience from 2004. “It was one of the things that got him even madder,” Hall press secretary Tom Staudter told TPMDC. And then in 2008, the Republicans used the song yet again, this time the ill-fated John McCain campaign. “This is yet another example of John McCain not learning anything from George Bush’s mistakes,” Hall told MSNBC, also adding: “The only one John McCain is Still the One for is George Bush.”
But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the McCain campaign — which was practically a walking Limewire setup. Jackson Browne also sued it for using his song “Running On Empty” in an ad, for which the two sides later reached an out-of-court settlement. Van Halen objected to McCain’s use of their song “Right Now” at a rally. The Wilson sisters from Heart strenuously objected to his campaign’s use of “Barracuda” to promote Sarah Palin. And finally, the McCain campaign used “Pink Houses” and “Our Country” by John Mellencamp, who sent a letter demanding that they stop.
Mellencamp had already been ripped off by the Bush campaign back in 2000, when they used “R.O.C.K. In The USA.” He asked them to stop — but that wasn’t the end of it. “They said OK, and then used it anyway,” Mellencamp told the Indianapolis Star, pointing out that the Bush campaign only stopped after the national media made fun of them for it. “I think they kind of said, ‘Oh, this isn’t playing the way we thought it would.’ So I think they quit using it — I think.” (The Indianapolis Star, September 3, 2000, via Nexis.)
The Bush campaign also used the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down,” and the Sting tune “Brand New Day” — and was told in each case to stop. Randall Wixen, the publisher of “I Won’t Back Down,” told the Bush camp to stop after being asked to do so by Petty’s management, saying that the use of the song “creates, either intentionally or unintentionally, the impression that … [the Bush] campaign have been endorsed by Tom Petty, which is not true.”
Four years earlier, the Bob Dole campaign was threatened with a lawsuit for its rewrite of the 1960s soul classic, “Soul Man,” turning it into “Dole Man,” much to the chagrin of the song’s publishers at Rondor Music International. The campaign agreed to stop using the jingle, as the Chicago Tribune reported in September 1996: “Rondor announced on Tuesday that it had warned the Dole/Kemp campaign it could be held liable for damages of $100,000 for each unauthorized use of the song, plus legal costs, if a satisfactory settlement was not reached.”
Perhaps the most famous music fail was President Ronald Reagan’s invocation during his 1984 re-election campaign of Bruce Springsteen — Reagan did not actually play Springsteen’s music, but tied his brand to the Boss’s in a speech. “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts,” Reagan said. “It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young American’s admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about.”
Springsteen fired back by declaring at a concert that he doubted Reagan ever listened to the “Nebraska” album. Then the Democrats tried to claim Springsteen’s support, only to have the Boss make it clear he was not endorsing anybody. (He later hit the campaign trail for John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008.)
Another music fail by the Reagan campaign involved their unsuccessful attempt to play John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses,” with its seemingly patriotic refrain, “ain’t that America” — and which is actually a cry of protest against a world of haves and have-nots. The Reagan campaign never ended up playing it, though — unlike the Bush and McCain campaigns, they dutifully sought Mellencamp’s permission, which the left-wing rocker refused. Mellencamp commented on the event in 1986, telling Newsweek: “Ronald Reagan appeals to people’s emotions, and not to logic. That’s what a guy in a rock-and-roll band does. Besides, if a dumb kid from Indiana can come from nowhere and have a hit record, it can happen to anybody. Isn’t that what America is all about? That’s what Reagan wants to represent. But that’s not logical. That’s not real.”
Just speaking for “myself” I would like to offer my apology to Mr. Henley for the stealing of his creative property on behalf of my fellow Republican candidate Chuck De Vore’s campaign. And an apology to his campaign supporters to whom he’s passing on this debt. I would characterize this action as a shakedown-nothing more than a shakedown- to cover his endless sense of entitlement and selfish ambition. For this I truly apologize!
So even if a candidate buys a licence to play songs from ASCAP/BMI the performer can still object?
Maybe the Republican Party needs to hire some budding musicians to make official songs they could use.
The Tea Bag Party are just “haters not debaters” or as others have dubbed them “screamers not dreamers”, with their failed attempts at stopping Healthcare reform, they say they respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence but they do not mind passing laws, through weak Governors (no one voted for this crazy) who only cares about getting elected Governor, on the backs of undocumented workers, that will not pass Constitution muster.
Brewer signed into law;
1. S.B. 1070,
2. No permit conceal weapons law,
3. The famous Birthers law,
4. Banning Ethnic studies law,
5. Could she be behind the Mural in Prescott, Arizona, ordered to be whiten,
6. On deck to pass, no citizenship to babies born to undocumented workers,
7. If she can read she should look up Arizona’s House Bill 2779 from two years ago (which was un-constitution and failed when legally challenged),
8. The boycotted Martin Luther King Day, what idiots don’t want another holiday? Yes, you guessed it Arizona.
Well Arizona, you can boycott new holidays and keep passing crazy laws and the rest of us will continue to challenged them in a court of law and continue to add cities to our Boycott of your state.
I real cannot believe anything that comes out of Brewer’s mouth, in an interview she first said her father had died in Germany fighting the Nazi in World War II (war ended 1945) but of course we find out the truth that father was never in Germany and died in California in 1955. But we are suppose to believe everything else she says, right! No one voted for you for Governor, yet you keep listening to the tiny brains of the crazies and signing into law everything that comes into their feeble minds, it only make you look dumb, stupid or racist, or maybe all three.
As for the Tea Bag Party, their phony patriotism is sickening; they are just racists going by another name. We all know you are just itching to put a sheet on their head? Let’s face it the Republicans had eight years to deal with health care, immigration, energy (remember Cheney’s secret meetings with oil companies where loosening regulation and oversight were sealed), climate change and financial oversight and governance and they failed. It appears that the Republican Party is only good at starting wars (two in eight years, with fat contracts to friends of Cheney/Bush) but not at winning wars as seen by the continuing line of body bags that keep coming home. The Republicans party will continue turned inward to their old fashion obstructionist party (and their Confederacy appreciation roots) because they continue to allow a small portions (but very loud portion) of their party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” to rule their party. I will admit that this fringe is very good at playing “Follow the Leader” by listening to their dullard leaders, Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Blowhards and acting as ill programmed robots (they have already acted against doctors that perform abortions).
The Birthers and the Tea Bag party crowd think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. The world is complicated and people like Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt believed that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now it’s about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. For a party that gave us Abraham Lincoln, it is tragic that the ranks are filled with too many empty suits and the crazy Birthers who have not learned that the way our courts work is that you get a competent lawyer, verifiable facts and present them to a judge, if the facts are real and not half baked internet lies, then, and only then, do you proceed to trial. The Birthers seem to be having a problem with their so called “Internet facts”. Let’s face it no one will take the Birthers seriously until they win a case, but until then, you will continue to appear dumb, crazy or racist, or maybe all three. I heard that Orly Taitz now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC), she wants to re-establish a family values party, that is like saying that the Catholic Church cares about the welling being of children in their care, too late for that. Yee Haw!
Montana.
Can you kindly summarize your point?
It is odd that there has been this big spike in right wing idiocy coming out of Arizona though. Texas has a higher background level of crazy and right now Arizona is like a supernova taking the attention. I wonder how long it will last.
Actually it isn’t that strange. Arizona has been moving gradually towards the middle over the last twenty years. The population has doubled in that time and a big part of that spike wasn’t old retirees who tended to be conservative, but a lot of younger families moving from blue states, etc. In 2008 McCain only received 53.4% of the vote here in Arizona, his sixth lowest vote total among the states he won. Now think about that, his home state was one of his least supportive states. Had McCain been from Texas, Florida, etc., he likely would have lost Arizona.
This state has a long history of very conservative, often racist politics and the supporters of those policies aren’t happy that they are consistently losing ground to moderates and liberals (simply termed as liberals in their tirades). Because of how the state legislature is set up conservatives still have a major majority in both houses but, when Napolitano was governor, she vetoed a lot of their stupidity. In fact she set the record for vetoes in the history of the state. You take her away, bring in Brewer who is a wing-nut’s wing-nut, and you see incredibly stupid legislation that was shut down by a reasonable governor make it out of the state house. At the same time you see an increase in non-conservative population as well as an increase in non-white population and the far white err, right is freaking out.
Chuck you should have known better. Don’ t mess with Don Henley. He is “big” on protecting the rights of artists.
Well done Mr. Henley!!!! I am so happy you went after this naive-dilusional-self-centered individual.