Politics & Entertainment Week

The protest song, the patriotic song, the Bono/Paul O'Neill World Tour 2002. Symbols of freedom and pop-culture's influence of and by politics.

In 1976 Jimmy Carter, borrowing a line from Bob Dylan's 1972 recording, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. "He who's not busy being born is busy dying," quoth the Georgian peanut farmer as evidence that he was in touch with the current culture.

While Carter quoting Dylan may be recorded as the first incident where a politician used popular music to increase his stature, it was not the first, nor the last, blurring of the line between the entertainment and political spheres.

As early as 1947, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall led protests against the "Hollywood Ten" hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Actor Ronald Reagan was cast as Mr. President in 1980, and returned for the sequel in 1984. Who can forget billionaire Ross Perot singing Patsy Cline's "Crazy" in his bid to oust the elder Bush, only to be upstaged by the saxophone-toting Bill Clinton.

Today, Washington is rife with entertainers making passionate bids for causes. John Travolta, Bob Barker and even [Tickle Me] Elmo (yes, the muppet) have given congressional testimony on behalf of freedom of religious persecution (for Travolta himself as a Scientologist? I ponder), pet neutering and music education, respectively.