Media Research Center CyberAlert -- 06/24/2002 -- PBS Rejected Charlie Daniels’ Tribute, "The Last Fallen Hero"

PBS Rejected Charlie Daniels’ Tribute, “The Last Fallen Hero”; Sunday Morning TV Too White & Male; Like a Liberal, Couric Saw a Conservative; Environmentalist Role in Fires Cited

1) Just a week after ABC booted Toby Keith from its 4th of July special because of his lyrics, country singing legend Charlie Daniels pulled out of PBS’s July 4th concert after PBS refused to let him perform his tribute to those lost to terrorism, “The Last Fallen Hero.” The objectionable lyrics: "Now the winds of war are blowing and there's no way of knowing where the bloody path we're traveling will lead." Singing the song on FNC on Friday, Daniels also had some choice words for Peter Jennings.

2) To illustrate George Stephanopoulos’s liberal advocacy, Fox News Sunday played three clips culled from the MRC archive. NPR’s Juan Williams delivered the usual liberal complaint about Sunday morning hosts: “It’s always a white male, it’s never a female, never a person of color.”

3) Washington Post headline: “In Test, Students Lack Geography Knowledge.” The subhead: “1 in 3 4th-Graders Can’t Find Own State.” The Washington Times the same day: “Students’ Geography Basics Improving, U.S. Report Says.”

4) Though even the Washington Post described Yale law professor Stephen Carter as “politically unpredictable,” Katie Couric insisted on NBC’s Today, over his objections, on labeling him as a “conservative.” Carter suggested: “Liberals tend to call me conservative, conservatives tend to call me a liberal.” Another bit of evidence as to where Couric stands.

5) On the bright side. On Thursday night, ABC’s Bill Redeker actually specifically listed “environmental lawsuits, which have kept the Forest Service from cutting down trees,” as one of the culprits for the huge fires in Colorado.

6) Letterman’s “Top Ten Ways the Army is Celebrating Its Birthday.”

Just a week after country singer Toby Keith revealed that Peter Jennings booted him from ABC’s 4th of July special because Jennings objected to the lyrics of Keith’s song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” a country singing legend, Charlie Daniels, pulled out of PBS’s special set for the same night after PBS said it would not let him perform his tribute to those lost to terrorism or in the war on terrorism, “The Last Fallen Hero.”

(Keith’s song featured the lyrics: “This big dog will fight/ When you rattle his cage/And you'll be sorry that you messed with/ The U.S. of A./'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/It's the American way.” For more about ABC pulling Keith from its July 4 show, at the insistence of Jennings, as well as for a RealPlayer clip of Keith singing the song on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports:
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020614.asp#3
Keith’s song, also known as “The Angry American,” jumped from #12 last week to #8 this week on Billboard’s “Hot Country Singles & Tracks,” showing that Jennings is clearly out of tune with country music listeners. For the latest Billboard list: http://www.billboard.com/billboard/charts/airplay/country.jsp )

The lyrics PBS apparently considered inappropriate for the annual “A Capitol Fourth” concert to be broadcast from Washington, DC’s Mall near the Capitol building: “Now the winds of war are blowing and there’s no way of knowing/Where this bloody path we’re traveling will lead/We must follow till the end/Or face it all again.”

An excerpt of an un-bylined AP story distributed on Friday from Nashville:

Country singer Charlie Daniels dropped out of an Independence Day television special, saying producers thought a song he'd planned to sing about Sept. 11 was inappropriate.

Daniels wrote a letter this week to Walter Miller, producer of the Public Broadcasting Service show "A Capitol Fourth," saying he was pulling out of the program because of objections to the song he wanted to perform, "The Last Fallen Hero."

Among the lyrics: "Now the winds of war are blowing and there's no way of knowing where the bloody path we're traveling will lead."

"The song in question is not an angry song," Daniels said in the letter, which his publicist provided to The Associated Press on Thursday. "It is my feeling that our country is engaged in a battle for our very survival and that we should be constantly
reminded that our enemy will do the most inhuman and dastardly things imaginable if we are to have future Independence Days to celebrate."...

END of Excerpt

Daniels appeared Friday afternoon on the Fox News Channel via satellite from Columbus, Ohio. He told host Diane Dimond at just past 2:15pm EDT: “When we sent the song in they said you can’t do that song and I thought it was a perfect 4th of July song and my statement was I will not be part of a 4th of July celebration where I can’t speak of our troops overseas and I can’t at least remember the people who died on 9-11.”

Now that’s putting your beliefs and patriotism ahead of making a few bucks.

Dimond asked Daniels what he thought about ABC’s objection to Toby Keith’s song. Daniels accused ABC of hypocrisy and Jennings of being an elitist: “If they’re objecting to Toby’s lyrics, I think they have worse words on about 90 percent of the shows that they show over there anyway. I don’t know what the problem is. I think, maybe Mr. Jennings is a little too sophisticated for Toby Keith. I don’t know, but I tell you, I would like to take Mr. Jennings to a truck stop or a farmer’s co-op or someplace like that and let him talk to the people. I think they’d find that, he’d find that they would very much like to hear Toby’s song on there.”

That would be a sight to behold: Peter Jennings at a truck stop while wearing a $3,000 suit.

Daniels pulled out his guitar and sang the song in question live on FNC during his interview with Dimond, whom FNC picked up after her old CNBC show, Upfront with Geraldo Rivera, was canceled.

The lyrics to “The Last Fallen Hero,” which I found on Daniels’ Web site, but which I updated to match what he sang:

Oh the cowards came by morning and attacked without a warning
Leaving flames and death and chaos in our streets
In the middle of this fiery hell brave heroes fell

In the skies of Pennsylvania on a plane bound for destruction
With the devil and his angels at the wheel
They never reached their target on the ground
Brave heroes brought it down

Chorus:
This is a righteous cause so without doubt or pause
I will do what my country asks of me
Make any sacrifice
We’ll pay whatever price
So the children of tomorrow can be free
Lead on red, white and blue
And we will follow you until we win the final victory
God help us do our best we will not slack nor rest
Till the last fallen hero rests in peace

Now the winds of war are blowing and there’s no way of knowing
Where this bloody path we’re traveling will lead
We must follow till the end
Or face it all again

And make no mistake about it, write it, sing it, preach it, talk it, shout it
Across the mountains and the deserts and the seas
The blood of innocence and shame
Will not be shed in vain

God help us do our best we will not slack nor rest
Till the last fallen hero rests in peace

END Reprint of lyrics

The Charlie Daniels Web site, which features a picture of him: http://www.charliedaniels.com/home.html

The page with the above-cited lyrics: http://www.charliedaniels.com/lyrics/fallenhero.html

The song is on a new CD, “Redneck Fiddlin’ Man,” and if you order it online it comes with....a Charlie Daniels bobble-head doll! Maybe you could send it to PBS. Or to Jennings. The ordering page: http://www.charliedaniels.com/salebarn/music/cdb.html

Catch the MRC on Fox News Sunday? To set up a panel segment of the ascendency of George Stephanopoulos to solo anchor ABC’s This Week starting this fall, Brit Hume, substitute hosting for Tony Snow, played three video clips of Stephanopoulos comments over the years on This Week.

The three Fox chose, which aired with “Courtesy Media Research Center,” beneath: From September 14, 1997, Stephanopoulos calling Jesse Helms a “terrorist.” From February 22, 2000, Stephanopoulos charging: “George W. Bush, especially because he’s had to move so far to the right, you know, he’s now the kamikaze conservative.” And from November 12, 2000: “Listen, if this race is counted fairly, Al Gore won more votes in Florida.”

For the MRC’s Web “Spotlight” on Stephanopoulos with these and many other examples of his liberal advocacy on ABC News: http://archive.mrc.org/mrcspotlight/stephanopoulos/welcome.asp

After NPR’s Mara Liasson noted how Tim Russert and Tony Snow also once worked for politicians, and Fred Barnes and Hume pointed out that Russert worked off-air for several years before taking over Meet the Press and that Snow had a long journalism career before writing speeches for 41, NPR’s Juan Williams delivered the usual liberal complaint:
“It strikes me as the usual suspects, you know. They bring in the usual suspects again and again. It’s always a white male, it’s never a female, never a person of color and I suspect he’ll have his run and I don’t know what good will-”
To moans from Liasson, Barnes jumped in and quipped: “You left out one other thing it always is: a liberal.”

Hume suggested Stephanopoulos does represent a minority group since he’s Greek.

All over the map. The headline in the June 22 Washington Post over a story about the results of the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test in geography in 2001 compared to 1994 for 4th, 8th and 12th graders: “In Test, Students Lack Geography Knowledge.” The subhead: “1 in 3 4th-Graders Can’t Find Own State.”

But the headline in the Washington Times the same day promised: “Students’ Geography Basics Improving, U.S. Report Says.” The subhead: “But 'Much More Work to Do’; Senior Scores Unchanged.”

Newsday, over an AP story, delivered this all-purpose subhead: “Mixed Results on National Test.”

Katie Couric’s definition of a conservative: Anyone who isn’t 100 percent liberal. Though even the Washington Post described Yale law professor Stephen Carter as “politically unpredictable,” Couric insisted, over his objections Thursday morning, on labeling him as a “conservative,” MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed.

     Carter, author of a new novel, “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” appeared on the first day of a new Today show book club. During her June 20 interview with him, Couric didn’t hesitate to tag him: "You are also politically conservative."
     Carter countered: "Oh I hope not. People, people say that, that's not how I think of myself."
     Couric wouldn’t back down: "Well, you're, you're, considered, you, you don't think that's fair. Because you have been described frequently as a political conservative."
     Carter: "Well liberals tend to call me conservative, conservatives tend to call me a liberal. And I like to think of myself as simply a guy with some kind of nutty ideas."

Carter seems to be on target here -- “liberals tend to call me conservative.”

In a profile which ran the same day in the Washington Post, reporter Linton Weeks suggested that “Carter is politically unpredictable -- he’s pro school voucher and anti school prayer...”

On the bright side. On Thursday night, MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth noticed, ABC’s Bill Redeker actually specifically listed “environmental lawsuits” as one of the culprits for the huge fires in Colorado.

Redeker explained on the June 20 World News Tonight: "The fires this year are large because the forests are a hundred times more dense than a century ago. A policy to extinguish all fires at all cost has kept them from naturally thinning the forests.... Another reason, environmental lawsuits, which have kept the Forest Service from cutting down trees."
Viewers then heard a supporting soundbite from U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, Republican from Colorado, of the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health: "It isn't the Forest Service sitting on their duff in the office. Frankly, it's the litigation that's going on."

From the June 21 Late Show with David Letterman, as presented by ten soldiers at the Army’s 44th Medical Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on the occasion of the Army’s 227th birthday, the “Top Ten Ways the Army is Celebrating Its Birthday.” Late Show Web page: http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/

10. "Everyone gets to sleep in till 0600"
(Specialist Robin Mathew)

9. "Lovely candlelit dinner in the mess hall"
(Specialist April Jacobs)

8. "M-1 tank plus 50,000 flowers equals one colorful float
(Major Owen Hardy)

7. "Just for the hell of it, invading Disneyland"
(Sergeant Doris Kennedy)

6. "Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White is gonna jump out of a cake"
(Lieutenant Colonel Joyce Stanley)

5. "Cap'n says we're getting walkie-talkies"
(Specialist Nuvia Lester)

4. "Strawberry ice cream"
(Staff Sergeant Darin Smith)

3. "Passing out cupcakes with a mark-19 grenade launcher"
(Captain Mary Johnson)

2. "Asking captured Taliban soldiers if they want a balloon and then saying, 'Ha! I bet you do!'"
(Lieutenant John Urciuoli)

1. "We got us one big-ass table at Chuck E. Cheese"
(Sergeant Richard Carnes)

> “Chung-King” tonight on CNN. With its new line-up starting tonight of Connie Chung at 8pm EDT/PDT followed by Larry King at 9pm EDT/PDT, David Letterman joked to an unappreciative Chung on Friday night, CNN can advertise it as a “Chung-King” line up. -- Brent Baker

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