Silk Summary:
From JJ Sefton- The Morning Report- 5/15/2024
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken performed Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” on the electric guitar on Tuesday night in Kyiv, Ukraine, as part of a solidarity visit to boost morale in the embattled former Soviet republic.
Blinken played rhythm guitar with The 1999 band at the Barman Dictat, a nightspot in the Ukrainian capital.
“I know this is a really, really difficult time,” Blinken said. “You need to know the United States is with you.”
. . . The scene recalled a bizarre event in the aftermath of a radical Islamic terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris, France, in 2015, when then-Secretary of State John Kerry, having missed a local “unity rally,” sought to console Parisians with a serenade by James Taylor, who performed “You’ve Got a Friend.”
As the estimable Joel Pollak notes, “Rockin in the Free World” was not a song in praise of the West. It was written by noted crackpot Canuck Lefty crank Neil Young – who made millions of dollars writing tunes bashing America and the west – just before the Berlin Wall came crashing down and millions enslaved behind it actually tasted freedom for the first time in decades, thanks to the America he and his ilk, including Fonda, made their bones and fortunes from bashing.
