TIL that in 1996, Rage Against the Machine played Saturday Night Live with host Steve Forbes. In protest of billionaires like Forbes, they hung two upside-down flags from their stage, against the wishes of staff. After a confrontation with SNL stagehands, they were kicked out before the second song.

I completely agree with almost everything you wrote. While, I wouldn't characterize RATM as "trying to survive within the system you have to live," I do believe you can make a living in America and still be anti-capitalist.

They way you phrased your original comment didn't express all that. It seemed like you were making a distinction between Forbes and RATM simply because they are musicians. My point is that distinction is not valid simply because their profession is 'musician'. They're not just "living within the system", they are accumulating tens of millions of dollars, and maintaining personal wealth which surpasses the majority of the "1%ers" they protest against, by selling their music through corporations like Sony that completely embody the ideals of capitalism just as much as Steve Forbes.

People in the North wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves.

A better analogy would be if a person in the North made millions of dollars writing plays that were published by a cotton company, and then spent all their free time publicly deriding others for making millions off the slave economy.

I don't disagree with the way RATM makes their money, nor do I think they should give it up (as some people mistakenly took from my arguments elsewhere in this thread) but I do think they are hypocrites for deriding "1%ers" en masse and publicly criticizing rich capitalists for being rich capitalists, when they themselves are rich capitalists in the 0.5%.

I also just think RATM are shitty people all around. For example, the bassist bragged to Rolling Stone recently about how he confronted Buzz Aldrin at a movie premier in order to "expose" the moon landings as staged and called Buzz and his wife "fake as can be".

I hate people who believe their celebrity status (not coming from an intellectual pursuit) is a pass to preach to the rest of the world about intellectual subject matter from a moral high horse, when in reality they get it wrong most of the time as well.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - musicfanclubs.org