As previously reported, NIN’s Trent Reznor, Rage’s Tom Morello, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, the Roots, Rise Against, Billy Bragg, Jackson Browne, and other famous musicians have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo and released a string of statements condemning the use of music for torture at Gitmo. Well, it looks like the debate is heating up a bit:
Debra Burlingame, director of Keep America Safe, a political organization co-founded by Liz Cheney that focuses “on issues like troop levels, missile defense, detainees, and interrogation,” called Reznor and company’s political stand “pathetic,” telling the Washington Times:
It’s almost laughable to think that heavy metal bands like Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine have a moral authority on national security issues.
They’re worried about torture of hard-core terrorists? This is really something I would expect to read in the Onion.
As you might imagine, NIN fans are disgruntled over these disparaging comments, and now prominent fansite The NIN Hotline has launched an email campaign demanding a “public apology by the group’s founder, Liz Cheney, to Trent Reznor, Tom Morello, and all the other ‘immoral musicians they’ve insulted.”
New Security Action has even taken notice of the campaign, saying they “applaud the efforts of the NIN Hotline” and, “[a]s a show of solidarity, we have NIN’s ‘March of the Pigs’ playing on our MySpace page now.”