And Then ... Last night I went to a concert in town. There was a whiff of the mob in the air when one of the singers made a comment about France and Canada "making sense" these days. The audience cheered, hooted, and lapped it up: "Look, famous people agreeing with me. I must be correct. Or at the very least I can be wrong in fashionable company!" The group then broke into a kind of sixties-style, sing-along-y, make-up-your-own-protest-verse routine that had all the earmarks of turning silly. Then Lyle Lovett, one of the performers, single handedly deflated the self-satisfied pomposity by making up a totally unrelated and humorous verse about Liberalville showcasing a lot of women who dress like men (we're famous for that). Thank god for Lyle. Fine, artists can have opinions, too. No problem. But save the political stuff. It's creepy, whether it's Ted Nugent shilling for family values (sorry, Ted, you're the only right-wing example I can think of) or Eddie Vedder doing his suffering-Jesus-Christ schtick for abortion rights. Get over yourselves, all of you.