I read that Jackson Browne has been speaking out against the war lately. Hey, good to hear that Jackson is still out there, holding on and holding out. Wow, Jackson Browne was once my favorite singing artist. Jackson seemed like the man for all seasons; he could rock when he felt the urge, he could get a pop hit going when he needed the money, he could push the social conscience button without turning everyone off, and he could croon the pathos and bathos of lost love and days gone by. Yea, Jackson Browne was about as intense a popular musician as you could get back in the 70s and 80s. He was truly an INFJ’s singer and songwriter.

I only saw Jackson Browne once, back in 1978 when he made an appearance at a free and very-unplugged concert on the Mall in D.C at a pro-ecology event (I think they called it “Sun Day”). He had his young son with him (recall that Browne’s first wife died soon after the son was born and that Browne committed himself to being a good father, taking his son along with him on his tours, avoiding the usual rock star debauchery in order to be a good parent). The Jackson Browne myth, i.e. of a rock star with substance, appeared to have some substance to it.

Then one day I wrote him a letter, using an address for correspondence provided on one of his albums. How naive of me — another one of those lessons in real life. I opened my heart a bit in my letter, telling Mr. Browne how important his lyrics and his music were to me, how they related to my daily life, how they gave me hope. Well, after a few weeks, I got a reply. Reality fix: the letter was not from Jackson Browne himself, but from one of his p.r. people. And the tone of her letter was very Californian — i.e., she tried to be nice, she acknowledged my feelings, but ultimately there was nobody home.

In other words, always remember this: the more famous a person is, the more unreal that person is. What you are seeing, however edifying or appealing, is a carefully crafted image, one fashioned by a group of investors in order to make money. Who or what the person behind that image really is, who knows. One thing, however, is for certain: whoever that person really is, they are definitely too busy to interact in any depth with the great unwashed masses (other than a concert and an occasional autograph on the street). Their time is money. But admittedly, in the case of a Jackson Browne, perhaps they have a valuable message to broadcast to the world as well.

One side-note about the war, one that relates to Jackson Browne in a way: I recently saw one of those “send to everyone you know” e-mails about how smart the President and his advisors are and how dumb the anti-war celebrities are (question: why do so many people feel that their mission in life is to pass along these supposedly interesting e-mail messages on a regular basis to 50 or more of their friends?). The list of dummies included Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Cher, Sean Penn, Ed Asner, Bono, and Larry Hagman (Larry Hagman!! Is he still around?). Jackson Browne didn’t make the list — probably because of his declining fame more than because of his solid credentials in foreign policy analysis (although Browne wouldn’t seem any more declining than Larry Hagman… ).

Getting back to this “patriotic” e-mail, and to some other things I’ve seen in the news recently and have overheard at work, it seems as though we are going back to the divisive postures that were last seen during the Vietnam war. I.e., both the protestors and the pro-war people are getting vehement; they are starting to take each other personally. That’s too bad. I hope that the anti-war people will try to make it clear that they aren’t trying to insult veterans, they aren’t trying to force people to become vegetarians or give up their SUVs (or listen to Jackson Browne music), and they aren’t condemning America or trying to make Saddam Hussein look like a hero. By the same token, I hope that the pro-war people will realize that protest and dissent is as American as apple pie. Our system works because we air our disagreements. Were we to adopt the viewpoint implied by that seemingly patriotic e-mail, i.e. that we should all silently support our leaders and assume they always know better than we do, than this just wouldn’t be America — it would be more like Iraq!

(And as to the notion that people with the highest levels of academic and career experience in politics and foreign policy analysis should be trusted to always make the right choices for our nation, let’s go back to the Vietnam days and pull out the resumes of Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson and General William Westmoreland; how could a dream team like that be wrong about America’s ability to achieve its objectives in Vietnam? And yet they were.)