Voting-- Better Than Shooting But...

Last week we ran John Thorpe's report on how the Republican Party stole the 2004 presidential election by hacking the Ohio vote. Lately we have been watching how profoundly anti-American fascist prototypes, the Koch brothers, have set about to use their billions-- including money supplied to them by Iran-- to undermine American democracy. (More on that tomorrow afternoon.) Lesson: democracy can be imperfect. The alternatives are always worse.

I was a longtime member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. I was one of several members-- maybe a majority-- who felt that the voting was being hacked to further the sentimental (and commercial) goals of the guys who picked the committee members and who went in another room to count the ballots "during lunch break." They kicked me off the committee long ago but now I'm still one of the 600 people who gets a printed ballot of the 15 nominees (this year it's 15) so I can help select the final inductees. We pick 5 from the list of 15. This year's 15-- all of whom released their first record over 25 years ago-- are:


My guess is that Guns and Roses would certainly win if the voting was open to the general public and will probably be one of the winners anyway. And will certainly be one of the winners if the votes are counted the way the nominations-- or general election ballots in Ohio and Florida were-- used to be. It makes the Hall of Fame populist-looking. I admit I didn't vote for them-- although John Amato was on the phone yelling at me while I was filling out my ballot. (He's friends with a bunch of them and was even in a short-lived Guns and Roses spin-off band called Amato and Roses or Guns and Amato... I can't remember.) Unfortunately, the night before I had just watched the Matt Sorum Selling L.A. episode-- or at least as much of it as I could stand before switching to Cupcake Wars-- the night before. I hope you enjoyed the Donovan song above. I did vote for him. Who would have been your 5 choices?