Where have all the protest songs gone?

Petty's latest is probably brilliant since no one paid much attention to it.Thanks to those who responded so far...check out the views to response ratio fellas,it's about one out of ten which is about what my experience vouches for...one out of ten people have anything important on their minds.

This is specifically for gs 5556...do your history and leave your cynicism at the gate.The civil rights movement which was very much on everyones mind all the time in no small part because the music of the time reflected it has a lineage right up to the removal of that a...hole Trent Lott for making inferences to all us white folks being better off if the sixties never happened.By the way protest songs have a unique way of getting people off their arses and into the street replacing the mindless pap that passes for news these days.It arguably is the most powerful musicopolitical force extant.Ralph Nader said it best in an interview on the new pbs news journal hosted by Bill Moyers

Moyers asked Nader "How is it possible that you have kept going for so many years when so many have tired?" and Naders reply was "It just comes down to self respect...I cant get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and not do what little I can to help make things better.That my friends may be the bottom line in the final analysis...What happened to our sense of self repect...has our generation become so cynical about it's ability to change things that we are willing to hide behind the consumerism machinery and define ourselves by what audio equipment or size of house or car or even job we do? I feel a protest song coming on!I will let all those world weary cynics have their say now.

Twl,You seem to be confusing a Seeger with a Aguilera and as usual the first thing anyone mentions when the topic of compassion comes up in America is socialism and big governments taking your precious money away...cmon man get out of that little box and yes Marvin Gaye was/is the man.

good one rosstaman!

Thanks for your comments Twl and I agree with what you say about the next fraud of a necessary war(I assume thats what you infer)in the middle east and now Korea.

Avideo if you think that what you hear on radio and t.v. is meaningful commentary I have two large towers in lower manhattan I'd love to sell you.

LUGNUT...May I point out to you that ART regardless of your personal opinion sways and or galvanizes opinions.Earlier I alluded a vast forgetting we are locked in with regards to self respect.I would wager you a pair of tenor amps that if you asked a person regardless of age how they cultivate personal respect they wouldnt have a clue...most think being wealthy or popular or politically powerful equals it.I am sorry that the protest movement of the past equates with getting laid for you for I have no such experience like that.Mine was an awakening of the illusion of differences between races and politics of being just that,an illusion.Onhwy61 is correct,only time will allow us to gain perspective on 9/11.But time and a vast forgetting tend to walk hand in hand and there is a danger of additional jingoism being heaped upon the memory of the fallen and the whys and wherefores of the event.The media will undoubtedly twist it all into rating compromised pap.

P.S. I firmly believe that we can agree to disagree and be civil and learn from one another because thats what I WAS BORN FOR to learn from you and anyone else who has something interesting to say.The alternative is too onerous for me to contemplate.