Dan Fishback: Spring Fling: tax dollars at work

Listen, I had a great time this weekend. I haven't felt this relaxed without protest signs or my Roland Barthes Reader in forever. Sure, SPEC turned off the sound equipment after only 12 minutes of For Sale's Quad performance. And yes, a creepy guy from Pi Lam sexually harassed me. And, as hard as it is to believe, I'm never very comfortable when frat boys take to the streets, their sense of entitlement swollen with booze. But despite all that, Saturday's weather was gorgeous, and it pains me to crawl back to my computer this morning.

In fact, the only thing that got me genuinely outraged over this Spring Fling was Friday's concert. And I didn't even go. I was thinking about buying a ticket, but then I saw a list of co-sponsors, among them...

The U.S. Army.

Now why on earth would an army in the middle of two wars (remember Afghanistan?) spend money on a concert, much less a whole concert tour? The Army and the College Television Network are carting The Donnas and OK Go all across the country, from Pennsylvania to New Mexico.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives just approved cutting nearly $25 billion in veterans' benefits. According to Congressman Lane Evans (D-Ind.), a vocal opponent of the reduction, "90 percent of the mandatory spending the Budget Committee proposes to cut is from cash payments to service disabled veterans, low-income wartime veterans and their survivors." Moreover, the new budget "makes no provision for additional service-connected disability benefits resulting from the present war with Iraq."

So not only do these cuts attack veterans who have been disabled or disadvantaged by previous wars, they deny future benefits to those fighting right now. If you were a soldier in the field, which news would be more heartbreaking: that many American citizens disapprove of the war itself, or that the government that sent you there will abandon you when you get home?

I cannot understand the counter-protesters who sometimes show up at anti-war rallies, screaming, "Why don't you support our troops?!" Their cries would be more appropriate at the White House. If their primary concern is the well-being of American soldiers, then they should join us in our critique of the Bush administration's domestic policies.

The federal government is waging economic war against its own warriors, and the Army is funding a concert tour.

Upon mentioning this macabre phenomenon to a fervent Republican, I was told, "Recruiting is really important." Perhaps. But at this moment in time, in this format, it is also particularly problematic.

Attach the Army's name to a rock show, something completely irrelevant to the military, and you gloss over all content or reality. Maybe you can laugh when you see chewing gum advertised with half-naked shiny bodies, or a jeans commercial in which you never see the jeans -- perhaps your choice of gum or jeans aren't very important. But your decision to join the military is. Particularly when such a decision seems dangerous at home as well as abroad -- when your government is also, to a significant degree, your enemy.

A government that uses pop music to market the military to college kids, only to make the lives of soldiers and veterans needlessly painful and difficult, has some serious ethical explaining to do.

As does a University that makes itself complicit in this spectacle.

Penn should have never involved itself in this glaringly irresponsible misallocation of tax dollars.

So am I saying that everyone who attended this concert is implicated in a domestic war against American troops? No -- virtually no one knew about the Army's involvement in Fling, and there was no critical discussion about it before the show actually took place. Still, in many of the face-to-face conversations I had last week, people seemed exasperated, as if to say, "Man, these days, everything I do and everything I buy is smothered in unethical taint. I give up. I have to have fun once in a while."

But fun and conscience are not mutually exclusive.

To provide an alternative to this ethically dubious production, Penn Students Against War on Iraq organized a benefit concert last Wednesday to raise funds for Iraqi humanitarian relief. As one flier said, you can "help out and rock out at the same time." Which is just to say that you can maintain your integrity and still dance around to loud music like an idiot.

Let the Army spend its money on the countless disabled, homeless and struggling vets. College kids can figure out a way to have fun without sketchy funds.

Dan Fishback is a senior American Identities major from Olney, Md.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.