Recently, apparently, there was a poll for Oklahomans to help choose the official state rock song, a very important task indeed! After the voting was over, The Flaming Lips’ song “Do You Realize” came out on top. The state House, however, overrode the will of the people and stripped the song of its newly won title. Now, I’ll plead a bit of ignorance on part of this. I don’t know if the vote was supposed to be binding. I also don’t know if the House was supposed to vote to ratify the poll and didn’t, or if they voted to overturn it. I just don’t know, and I don’t care. That’s largely irrelevant.

The firestorm over the incident, though, is something of interest. It appears that the House voted against the song, because one of the members (no clue what his name is) showed up at the State House wearing a shirt emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. So, no state rock song title for them, a move I agree with. I’ve met a lot of Oklahomans having lived here for all but a year of my 34 years. I’ve not met one who thinks Communism is pretty cool. That the Lips’ fans don’t find anything wrong with the shirt says to me that they’re either historically illiterate, which is pretty scary, or that they’re not and they don’t find communism troubling, which is really scary.

One of the most annoying aspects of this whole affair is the sanctimonious sermon. by The Oklahoman’s editor, Ed Kelley. “The Flaming Lips are the latest Oklahomans to be demonized by the state House of Representatives.” Bah! He downplays the significance of the T-shirt by noting that “the old communist party…went out of business with the old Soviet Union nearly two decades ago.” I’m sure the people of Cuba and China would find that enlightening, if only their communist oppressors would give them the internet access to hear Kelley’s remarks.

“Just imagine how riled up legislators would have gotten if a band member had worn a t-shirt from a government currently in power, say, that of Barack Obama’s,” he then opines. Ed, while that’s a nice straw man, it doesn’t follow at all. Sure, many of us in Oklahoma have some very strident policy differences with the president, there’s a big difference between a liberal Democrat and what Reagan so rightly dubbed “the Evil Empire” (though I’ll grant those differences seem to be narrowing these days). Last I checked, President Obama doesn’t have a nuclear arsenal aimed at America.

Kelley then takes pot shots at the effort to put the Ten Commandments on the State House lawn. Heaven forbid (pun intended) that the silent majority of Oklahoma might want to acknowledge what they (we? 🙂 see as our heritage. We dare not offend, Kelley declares, the “small but vibrant communities of Asians in Oklahoma.” Lost on Kelley, apparently, is that he bristles at celebrating one monument to a belief system, The Ten Commandments, because it might offend a group, but has no problem celebrating another, the hammer and sickle, even though it offends a different group.

Next on his hit list are those awful, narrow-minded people that might actually want to enforce immigration laws, making illegal to hire illegal immigrants. Sure, Mr. Kelley, they may be hard-working, but they’re here illegally. The last time I looked things up, when you do something illegal, you’re a criminal. It’s really pretty simple.

Not safe from this non sequitur-laden diatribe are the efforts to make English the official language of the state. “Never mind that Oklahoma literally means ‘Land of the Red Man’ and home to dozens of Indians, many of whom have their own languages.” The English-only efforts are an attempt to combat run-away multiculturalism which has allowed an influx of immigrants to move into an area (and not just Oklahoma) and refuse to assimilate or learn the language. Instead, we’re supposed to cater to their every need, up to and including printing everything in English and Spanish, for example. It’s seen, and rightly so, I think, as an unreasonable burden upon the State and its people which drives up the cost of governing. “Supporting” only one language cuts costs, among other things.

In the end, what we learned from the Flaming Lips episode is that some Oklahomans like communists, and Ed Kelley can’t seem to construct a coherent argument.