Ed. Note: My take is here. — JN

Who can forget the way Natalie Maines singlehandedly damned her little country trio – the Dixie Chicks – to infamy by bashing President George W. Bush in March 2003?  She was on tour in Europe criticizing our president while he was in D.C. sending troops to liberate Iraq. Country music fans rightly viewed Maines’ criticism as a move more befitting someone like Bill Clinton, who also protested American wars while on foreign soil (the Vietnam War), and the Dixie Chicks quickly disappeared from radio airwaves.

Here’s Maines’ quote:

 Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.

For the record: I’ve been critical of Maines’ attack on Bush ever since and plan to continue being critical of it. Because the bottom line is this: The American people — the salt-of-the-earth, work-hard-everyday-to-make-ends-meet, sign-up-to-fight-in-the-military people — don’t like to see someone standing with Europeans and hurling criticism at our President on the eve of war. They rightly equate that with criticizing the mission before it begins.

But this is not to say that the American people don’t support the freedom to criticize a president at the right time and in the right way, even overseas. And as a matter of fact, I’m betting that 99.9% of those same salt-of-the-earth folks who were outraged by Maines’ criticism of Bush are giving a standing ovation to Peter Fonda for calling President Obama a “[bleeping] traitor.” (The other .1%  will have a problem with the “[bleeping]” part.) Furthermore, I can imagine people throughout flyover country giving each other high fives as they read Fonda’s words.

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Via The Telegraph: [emphasis added]

Against Hollywood typecasting, [Hopper] was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican Party. “I’ve been a Republican since Reagan,” he once said in an interview. “I voted for Bush and his father. I don’t tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.”

Let us all now pause for Patrick Goldstein to scurry up an article trashing Hopper as an untalented whiner. It’s also worth mentioning that Hopper wasn’t quiet at all when he chose to support President Obama in 2008.

Here’s something else you might not have read about Hopper. Many of his obituaries include a colorful anecdote about an angry John Wayne chasing him around the set of “True Grit” with a loaded gun. But did you know Hopper credited Wayne with saving his career?

Via Wikipedia by way of a 1994 interview with Charlie Rose: (more…)

***Update: Roger L. Simon writes today – to which I add a hearty Amen: So when you think of Dennis on that iconic bike in ‘Easy Rider,’ think of America at its best, out on the open road, optimistic and heading straight on with unflinching belief in liberty.

We all knew this was coming but that doesn’t lessen the blow. Dennis Hopper was a legend, an irreplaceable force of personality on screen, and a true Hollywood iconoclast who changed everything.  Below is an obituary from the AP and a wonderful tribute video put together by Matt Zoller Seitz, a critic and filmmaker.

Hopper had been ill for a while, and so sensing this inevitability I wrote something of a tribute just this last month. Great actor. Great director. Great American. Terrible loss.

God bless the wild man with the gentle soul. May he rest in peace.

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AP:

Dennis Hopper, the high-flying Hollywood wild man whose memorable and erratic career included an early turn in “Rebel Without a Cause,” an improbable smash with “Easy Rider” and a classic character role in “Blue Velvet,” has died. He was 74.

Hopper died Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles beach community of Venice, surrounded by family and friends, family friend Alex Hitz said. Hopper’s manager announced in October 2009 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The success of “Easy Rider,” and the spectacular failure of his next film, “The Last Movie,” fit the pattern for the talented but sometimes uncontrollable actor-director, who also had parts in such favorites as “Apocalypse Now” and “Hoosiers.” He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, and in March 2010, was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. (more…)

One of the best things to happen to filmdom during the mid-eighties was the resurgence of The Mighty Dennis Hopper: “River’s Edge,” “Blue Velvet,” “Hoosiers…” From out of nowhere, this completely unconventional force of personality whose career reached all the way back to the tail-end of the Golden Age, was suddenly everywhere, livening up and taking to another level whatever movie was lucky enough to have him. Even the lousy ones, and there were plenty of those.

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The above video compilation is about as perfect an encapsulation of his career as you could hope for. Hopper’s a complicated guy who changed everything with his directorial debut “Easy Rider,” blew it all with the disastrous “Last Movie,” and then slowly climbed his way back to a career filled with a number of iconic performances. His portrayal of Frank Booth in “Blue Velvet” is one of my all-time favorites, his confrontation with Christopher Walken in “True Romance” is the stuff of legend, and what a testament to his range that this is the same actor who wrenched our hearts in “Hoosiers.”

There’s a taste of all those moments in the video, and much, much more. I would also urge those of you haven’t seen “Easy Rider” to give it a look. Not only is it a hands-down masterpiece regardless of your politics, but thematically it’s much more in line with conservative ideals (later in life Hopper would become a Reagan Republican) about liberty than anyone wants to admit to, especially the left. Just the fact that our easy riders don’t wear motorcycle helmets feels like a revolutionary statement in this burgeoning era of the oppressive nanny state. (more…)