Is My Favourite Band Conservative?

My favourite band is My Chemical Romance. Yes, I know people will flock to the comments with comments like “emo fag,” “do you cut yourself?” or something along those lines. I really don’t care, and I really don’t care to defend my taste in music to anyone.

The reason I bring this up is that I came across a blog post about them that was just…special.

Recently, MCR came out with a new album called Conventional Weapons. They released the album in stages of two songs at a time. One of the songs in the second installment, Number Two, is titled “Gun.” (yes, the period is part of the title), and this is probably one of my favourite songs off the entire album.

However, the lyrics to it made me question something. Is My Chemical Romance possibly conservative?

According to AZ Lyrics:

Because the government
Because the government wants your gun
Wants your gun

Some of the other lyrics in the song could be argued to be talking about a police state, as well.

It is not like I would honestly care or stop listening to their music if they were. I listen to music from bands that are very overtly conservative or have played at conservative conferences. Journey played at the 2012 Republican National Convention, and I don’t really care. Nonetheless, I became curious.

I decided to simply use Google and find out if the band had ever made any political statements of any kind.

The only thing I have found is that Frank Iero, the rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist for the band, is pro-gay, a vegetarian who was dubbed by PETA to be one of their World’s Sexiest Vegetarians, and voted for then Senator Barack Obama in 2008.

So at least one of the band’s members are definitely liberal, and that doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.

But apparently some conservative blog back in 2010, when MCR came out with their music video for “Na Na Na” in their album Danger Days, wrote about how the Gerard Way, the lead singer and frontman, might be a “closet conservative.” Before I read it, I was, for a split second, legitimately concerned that this might be true.

Then I read it, and I could not stop laughing at how ridiculous his reasoning was (emphasis not mine).

Gerard ruffles liberal feathers from the get go:

“Look alive, sunshine. 109 in the sky, but the pigs won’t quit. You’re here with me, Dr. Death Defy. I’ll be your surgeon, your proctor, you’re helicopter.  Bumping out the slaughtamatic sounds to keep you live…  Anti-matter for the master plan. Louder than God’s revolver and twice as shiny!...The future is bulletproof.  The aftermath is secondary.  It’s time to do it now and do it loud!  Killjoys, make some noise!”

Doesn’t Gerard know that mentioning God is a no-no (or was that ‘na na’?), and that coupling Him with a revolver might cause the kids to link a Creator—from which all our rights are derived—with self defense?

Liberals are all anti-God now apparently and wanting to snuff out any mention of God, specifically the Christian god, in public square, because that offends our delicate sensibilities.

He goes on by pointing out themes he sees in the music video that apparently mean the music video and the band are propagating a conservative message. Like these:

• American flags proudly displayed.
• Guns as legitimate tools of self defense.
• American muscle cars and the freedom that comes from the open road (It would be hard for Killjoys to save the world if they were waiting all day for public transportation).
• Vampiric authority figures tied to the federal government or a company closely associated with it.
• Resistance movements, individualism, and self-reliance.
• Orwellian double-speak.  Better Living Industries (i.e., BL.ind)
• Dystopian future (batteries provided by Better Living Industries have played a role).
• State controlled media.

If anything, the spider (which I actually have as a tattoo on my back) on the American flag should be seen by him as a disgrace to the honour and purity of the flag, not a proud display of it.

But liberals apparently can’t like the American flag too. That’s just a conservative thing, because they’re “real” Americans that eat meat and hate homos. Even though my personal Facebook banner for the longest time was this photo:The other stuff that he says are reasons why Gerard Way is a conservative just do not make any sense, like the fifth bullet-point, “Resistance movements, individualism, and self-reliance.” No liberal resistance movement has ever existed, I guess. And liberals all must want this hive-mind community that takes away all of your individual rights. This person seems to have absolutely no understanding of liberal ideology, other than what he has heard about those scary liberals from Fox News and the Drudge Report.

As for the “[vampiric] authority figures tied to the federal government or a company closely associated with it,” that was completely nonsensical. One, because there are no ties shown between BL.ind and any government in the video; I assumed the “dystopian future” came about because there was no government in sight. Two, because now a conservative is saying that corporations are bad. And I agree. Corporate and government ties are very much a bad thing. I see no evidence of this in the video or in the lyrics of the song though.

In the end, this is a music video, not a propaganda film. One can read into it to find some other meaning, but this kind of interpretation of the video is simply absurd. Shame on you, Douglas Ernst, for making me worried that my favourite rock star might be a conservative, when your reasoning behind this was obviously grasping at straws.

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