Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. Do not congratulate. This is not business as usual.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

This blog will pay for itself.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

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Reader Interactions

51Comments

  2. 2.

    TheOtherWA

    Love it! Byrne made him grovel. Every musician should make politicians do this when they use a piece of music without permission.

  3. 3.

    Joseph Nobles

    Hey, where is Dennis G? Did the Rebels fire on Fort Sumter 150 years ago or did they not?

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    That’s one of the best political apologies I can ever remember hearing. The only thing he could have improved is the presentation: too much looking at notes and too little inflection in his voice. But the words are exactly right. He didn’t rely on lame passive voice or refer to unnamed somebodies who might have been offended. He admitted wrongdoing, showed that he understood why his actions were wrong, and promised not to do it again. That’s the right way to apologize.

  9. 9.

    Citizen Alan

    I doubt Byrne made him do anything. Can you imagine Michele Bachman making a public apology like this if she’d gotten busted using a song without permission? Has any Republican ever apologized like this after any of the numerous occasions when they used songs without permission, even songs closely identified with performers openly hostile to the GOP (think Raygun and “Born in the USA”). My impression of Crist has improved significantly just from this brief gesture of (apparent) humility, because if I can’t get real humility from the Right, I’ll settle for them at least trying to fake it. I don’t know if this means Crist is really a stand-up guy despite his political affiliation, but if he is, it probably explains why he got his ass kicked by a teabagging loon.

  11. 11.

    Southern Beale

    Charlie Crist blinked!

    David Byrne, Charlie Crist Settle Suit Over Campaign Song Usage

    __
    Both parties confirmed that the suit had been settled yesterday. Terms of the settlement weren’t made public, but they did include Crist making a public apology Monday on (what else?) YouTube.

    So it was settlement-related.

    More songwriters should sue over this shit. Really.

  12. 12.

    Roger Moore

    @Citizen Alan:
    I assume that it’s an admission that he’s never running for anything again. When a politician talks about his next campaign as a hypothetical rather than a given, it means he’s throwing in the towel but just can’t bring himself to admit it yet.

  13. 13.

    PurpleGirl

    The song that they used was On the Road to Nowhere. And that’s where the campaign went.

  14. 14.

    TheOtherWA

    @Roger Moore: I don’t know. He’s got that “let’s just get this over with” look in his eyes, when he bothers to look at the camera, that says to me he didn’t want to do this.

    It’s an honorable apology, rare from a politician.

  15. 15.

    Bmaccnm

    Am I giving away too much if I say at first I thought this was a picture of Lucius Malfoy (fifth on Forbes Magazine’s “Richest Fictional Characters” list)?

  16. 16.

    Southern Beale

    Here’s the scoop from Rolling Stone.

    Byrne had sued Crist for $1 million. Says Byrne:

    In a statement released yesterday, Byrne said that he was surprised to learn that the unauthorized use of pop songs in political advertising was very widespread. “It turns out I am one of the few artists who has the bucks and (guts) to challenge such usage. I’m feeling very manly after my trip to Tampa!,” Byrne said. The musician went on to express his hope that by taking a stand on this issue, other politicians may reconsider this practice in the future.

    Ayyyy fucking men. Seems like this happens more often with Republican’ts, who spout free market fairy tales while at the same time acting like the world is theirs for the taking.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Wow.

    Just wow.

    That was an honest, no mincing about, apology.

    Christ should be commended for that.

    He took responsibility, admitted he was wrong, and made a promise not to do it again in the future.

    He can’t run as a Republican ever again.

  18. 18.

    DonkeyKong

    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

  19. 19.

    HyperIon

    @TheOtherWA wrote:

    that says to me he didn’t want to do this.

    of course he didn’t want to do it.
    but he manned up anyway.

    i don’t like him and what he enabled in FL (fanned the flames and then got burnt by them…now HE is out of the fire but the state is fucked….Scott…ugh).

    but he didn’t weasel out.
    so, yeah, an honorable apology, regardless of his job description.

  22. 22.

    Surreal American

    Pretty straight-forward apology from Crist. Nothing flippy floppy about it at all.

  23. 23.

    Southern Beale

    I’m sorry but you don’t get credit for doing shit someone makes you do. Crist was ordered to make that apology or pay $1 million. I’m not going to be saying “good for him” when he’s obviously got a gun to his head.

    Maybe it’s because I live in Nashville which is first and foremost a songwriters town but too many people think a song they like is theirs for the taking. It’s not. It’s the same as stealing anything else. Intellectual property is property.

    Republicans are all law and order until it applies to them and then it’s “oh what’s the worst that can happen, I pay the dirty fucking hippie some money? Big deal!” Er, no.

  26. 26.

    scav

    All I came away with is how plastic he looks. Well, that and the words had clearly been crafted by simply teams of lawyers and so very likely should not be taken as a 100% reflection of his own thoughts. Granted, he wasn’t under the best of circumstances and there is no way he could have read anything that hadn’t made it past the legal cast of thousands. Is he always that Ken-like?

  28. 28.

    Camchuck

    Simply put, making that video was worth $1mil to Crist. I’m not impressed. I’m curious though, if he had a viable campaign warchest, would it have shelled out the cash?
    That said, I am impressed that Byrne left $1mil on the table for the public apology.

  29. 29.

    Adam Tebrugge

    Papers around here said Crist and Byrne had friendly chats durimg the settlement and that they even looked alike. Charlie has also made similar apologies in the Florida press.

  32. 32.

    Lev

    By the way, thanks Kendrick Meek, for staying in the race. Without you, we could have averted Marco Rubio. Why did he stay in again? Has anyone asked him?

  33. 33.

    drkrick

    Not a big fan of the need to force somebody to grovel. It’s no mystery why the rest of the former Talking Heads want to have nothing to do with Byrne – what a nightmare he must have been to deal with.

  36. 36.

    Petorado

    Well, it’s a start: no more co-opting popular musical culture by right wingers trying to paste on a thin veneer of connection to the common person, for whom they really feel nothing but contempt.

    Now if only God would sue the Republicans to prevent them from co-opting religion. … Followed by the flag, the military, fetuses, guns, 9/11, patriotism, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution …

  37. 37.

    wag

    I bet that David wrote the apology, and made it part of the settlement decree that it had to be read verbatim. I sounds like a spoken work piece, a piece of art that happens to be an apology.

  38. 38.

    forked tongue

    My favorite moment starts at about 0:42:

    “The use of David Byrne’s song and his voice in my campaign. Advertisement without his permission was wrong…”

    “Yeah, I gotta do this. But I’m sure as hell not gonna do a run-through first.”

  39. 39.

    Citizen Alan

    @Southern Beale:

    Um, no. No one ordered him to do this. It was pursuant to a settlement agreement, the terms of which are likely confidential. I imagine that Byrne agreed to come down off his last offer (whatever that was) in exchange for the apology, which while legalistic, appears reasonably genuine. If Crist’s ego had not been up to apologizing in a public forum, then the settlement agreement would not have had that as one of its terms and instead Byrne would have been offered more money. I would be somewhat surprised if Byrne had made the public apology a non-negotiable settlement term, but if he had, I still think it says something positive about Crist that he would accept it as part of the settlement.

  40. 40.

    wag

    @Citizen Alan:

    I still think it says something positive about Crist that he would accept it as part of the settlement.

    Agreed. Crist has always struck me as a fairly reasonable guy. He should be the heart of the GOP instead of the middle of the road fringe.

  41. 41.

    Citizen Alan

    @Lev:

    I dunno. Perhaps Kendrick Meeks stayed in because he won the Democratic primary, so he felt he owed it to his voters to try to represent them. Perhaps he thought that he had a shot and if he’d won, he’d have been a vastly better Senator for his constituents than Crist or Rubio.

    Some other provocative questions: Why did Crist continue his quixotic Independent bid after voters in the party he’d been in his whole life rejected him? Why couldn’t he suck up his pride and defect to the Democratic Party where he probably could have beaten Meeks in a head to head race? (He had time; he announced his independent candidacy before the deadline for filing for the Democratic primary.) Why is it Meeks’ fault that Rubio beat Crist by over twenty points when the margin between Crist and Meeks was only 29% to 20% despite Crist’s massively superior name recognition and hair styling?

    Poor Kendrick Meeks, the Nader of his time, doomed to be the scapegoat for somebody else’s inability to get the job done.

  44. 44.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Citizen Alan: Remember when Markos Moulitsas kept saying that Charlie Crist should defect to the Democrats, and then weeks later Markos Moulitsas decided the purpose of his blog community was to enforce a narrow range of orthodoxy? That was classic.

  45. 45.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Petorado:

    Now if only God would sue the Republicans to prevent them from co-opting religion. … Followed by the flag, the military, fetuses, guns, 9/11, patriotism, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution …

    and MY UTERUS!

    That word needs to be irreversibly associated with Florida, much as Santorum is with … well, Santorum.

  46. 46.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    Why, oh why, Charlie, at the end of your mea culpa did you not jump up and sing, Don’t leave me stranded here/I can’t get used to this lifestyle.

  47. 47.

    Lysana

    With the oddity of that set and his shirt, I kept expecting the camera to pull back to reveal him in some bizarre-looking outfit that wound up being a giant horse’s ass.

    Oh, wait, they already had him on camera. My bad.

  48. 48.

    Paul in KY

    Good apology. No weasel words. I’m assuming Mr. Byrne’s lawyers wrote out the script.

    Mr. Crist does not look pleased when reciting his apology.

    I’m not a David Byrne fan (I was a Talking Heads fan & he broke up the group, IMO), but good on him for getting this aploogy.

  49. 49.

    MattR

    @Citizen Alan: Really? Charlie Crist had two unpleasant options before him and chose the one that he found less painful. You are going to give him credit for that?

  50. 50.

    N W Barcus

    If the various people whose work Byrne and Eno appropriated for the basis of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (even the title is from someone else’s novel) had done what Byrne has done here there would have been no album.

    It’s sad that Mr Byrne has now become Kathryn Kuhlman, the evangelist whose estate held up the release of MLBG until they could take her voice out of it because they disapproved of its use.

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