Flaming Lips Fiasco Wrap-Up

Now that the dust has settled on last week’s Flaming Lips rock song fiasco, we bring you some of the responses that were offered up by news reporters and bloggers.

Before we do that though, we would be remiss if we didn’t point you to The Lost Ogle’s glorious post today, “Yoshimi Battles the Big Hypocrites…”.

The post features photos of three glory-hogging, hypocritical, spineless Republican representatives that posed for pictures with the band (next to the commie and the potty-mouth) in early March, then turned around and voted against the song in late April. If only major news organizations would expose this sort of hypocrisy. Thank you, The Lost Ogle.

Now, where are you going to be on Tuesday afternoon?

Governor Brad Henry will sign an executive order on Tuesday declaring the Flaming Lips song, “Do You Realize??,” the official rock song of Oklahoma. The public is invited to attend the event, which will take place at 2pm on Tuesday, April 28, at Oklahoma History Center, 2401 N. Laird Avenue in Oklahoma City.

Here are Wayne Coyne comments about the whole thing, via The Oklahoman:

“This didn’t get put into law because we know some rich lobbyist. This was voted on. It was overwhelmingly voted upon, and we won. It wasn’t like we were handed this or anything. This was a vote that happened. So we’re just simply going by what the majority of the people that voted in Oklahoma wanted.”

“Me, I just say look, it’s a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that.”

“These naysayers who want to talk about me saying (profanities) and Michael wearing this T-shirt, everybody can see through how silly this stuff is. I figured that no matter what happened, people would come to our rescue. People would have a reason to really fight for us and say, ‘No, this isn’t what Oklahoma is all about.’ … And I think the governor is very cool, how he’s come to our rescue.”

The vote against was the song definitely noticed outside of Oklahoma, receiving mentions from Fox News, Yahoo News, The Los Angeles Times, Daily Kos, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NME, The Dallas Morning News, Pollstar and Pitchfork.

Some other responses to last week’s adventure into idiocy:

Yet this is par for the course in the conservative House, which seems intent on taking aim at diversity of thought, science, politics and about anything that doesn’t conform to its narrow view of what Oklahoma ought to be. To many we must come across as backward hicks — not because of the people in Oklahoma, but because of some of the people who are supposed to represent them. - The Oklahoman

It may not be an official duty enumerated in the State Constitution, but one of the most important roles for Gov. Brad Henry these days is protecting Oklahoma’s image. Amazingly, he is trying to protect our image from potential damage caused by our own Legislature. - Edmond Sun

I fully realize that the “Official Oklahoma Rock Song” is a frivolous issue, one without any pressing social import, or that will have any impact on the state’s woeful economy, sub par schools, and scandalous disregard for the health and well-being of the citizens of this state. But what happened today might explain why these problems exist. If our state legislature cannot get its act together to do something as simple – as mindless, even – as passing a resolution officially recognizing a pop song, it makes one despair of these people doing anything substantive about the serious problems that face Oklahoma. - Tulsa World

The current GOP-dominated Oklahoma Legislature is truly an embarrassment at this point. Its latest weird, backwards action was to reject a resolution that made the song “Do You Realize??” by The Flaming Lips the state’s official rock song. The song was overwhelmingly chosen in an online contest, but that didn’t stop Oklahoma House members from rejecting the song as they attacked the band’s members for how they dress and how they talk. - Okie Funk

But according to The Oklahoman, some stick-up-their-ass House Republicans weren’t going to have any of it. Rep. Mike Reynolds (R-Oklahoma City) appears to have been offended by the fact that the Flaming Lips have been known to use swear words. He issued the following brilliant quote: “Their lips ought to be on fire”. - Daily Kos

from oklahomarock.com