Affirmed Oklahoma rock song has meaning
Buzz up!
BY GEORGE LANG
Published: May 5, 2009

Name anything under the sun, and it has its detractors. Somewhere in the expanse of YouTube, a video of yellow Labrador puppies playing in the sun surely elicits some vitriolic comment about the scourge of immature domesticated dogs.

The Flaming Lips are not innocent puppies by any stretch; they are artists who, beginning in the ’80s, wildly pushed society’s hot buttons while blasting out white-hot sheets of noise and, as a side effect, delivered a counterpoint on what it means to be from Oklahoma. Counterpoints create arguments, and in the wake of the state House of Representatives’ defeat of the state rock song resolution and Gov. Brad Henry’s overturning that decision with an executive order, the Lips’ detractors are out in force. They are angry about Michael Ivins’ hammer-and-sickle shirt, Wayne Coyne’s profanity, or simply the fact that someone else didn’t win.

For the sake of their after-the-fact fury, I sincerely hope these detractors are among the 21,000-plus people who voted in the online poll. Participation in the process gives weight and substance to debate.

Henry was right to sign the executive order, thereby honoring the results of that online vote organized by the Oklahoma History Center and the Oklahoma Film and Music Office. To do otherwise would simply ratify the sour notion of disaffected voters in actual elections: that their voices do not count.

Organizations such as the Oklahoma Creativity Project seek to attract innovators. Presenting Oklahoma as a receptive destination where new ideas are encouraged and where people have voices is essential to that mission.

The vote results on the official rock song might seem trivial to some, but to squelch those results would send the signal that new or different ideas are not entirely welcome. As the University of Central Oklahoma’s Academy of Contemporary Music nears its opening, it must communicate to prospective students that this is a place where their musical impulses, no matter how far from the mainstream, will be given the chance to flourish. Without Henry’s executive order, that promise would have an asterisk placed next to it.