We don't like to get overly political here at Audio Phix, but let's be real. Music is all about speaking one's voice and rock and roll used to be about fighting the man. Instead, giant record companies turned things around and made some musical artists feel they were "the man" when record companies might just be using them.
Back in 1989, the United States military wanted to drive Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega from the Vatican's embassy in Panama where Noriega had holed up trying to escape capture. To help get him to leave, the U.S. military blasted all kinds of rock at the embassy with extreme volume. Noriega hated rock and roll, it seems. One of the songs played was "We're Not Going to Take It" by Dee Snider's Twisted Sister. That was kind of cool.
It was also kind of cool how Snider made a living dressed in almost comical drag. Twisted Sister's music wasn't truly great - maybe a handful of songs were fine - but Snider's showmanship allowed the band to sell lots of records and make them rich. And what the rich have that many other people don't is the ability to speak their mind on social media or wherever and get lots of people to notice them because they are, in fact, rich.
Dee Snider refuses to apologize for hurting others
Snider likes to talk, but his lack of awareness is what causes people to react negatively to him sometimes and he just doesn't seem to get it. He was going to be part of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, but after saying he supported Paul Stanley of KISS' odd rant on, well, lots of things transphobic, the people over the parade told Snider "Thanks but no thanks."
Snider was confused by this because he had previously supported some causes of the LGBTQIA+ community. But after getting kicked of the parade, Snider seemed to get mad and said that "you're not canceling me!" I assume the "you're" he is referring to is the LGBTQIA+ community. Heck, Snider might as well have said "you people" to them. Part of what Snider recently told Chuck Shute was this:
"You’re not canceling me. You’re not shutting me up. And the big point was that community — the LGBTQIA+ community, and whatever letters we’re adding — they need the support of not just the people who agree with them one hundred percent, they need the support of the middle, and that’s where most of us are. [They need] the people of the middle to accept them and recognize their rights and who they are. But that does not mean we have to — I use the word ‘fealty’ — fealty and bow down to every little thing they say. Who agrees with every single detail of what anybody says? So I just pushed back on it. Everybody backed off. They were shocked. ‘Cause most people just apologize or curl up in a fetal position."Dee Snider
The problem with all of this is it is cool for someone to go along with a group that probably gets dissed by most of conservative America just because you don't want to offend people. But Snider is so the middle road that he appears to likely not really stand for anything. That is until he gets some pushback because he supports an argument, like the one Stanley had, that so clearly underpins why many simply hate the LGBTQIA+ community. Snider could have thought logically about Stanley's comments and disagreed with them and not actually promoted them. Heck, even Stanley apologized afterward for what he said. But not Snider and that's why Dee Snider simply isn't cool anymore.