Green Day is on Reprise Records, a member of the Recording Industry Association of America. The chairman and CEO of the RIAA is Mitch Bainwol. The RIAA website touts him as one of the 50 more influential politicos in Washington, a powerful lobbyist with ties to Bill Frist and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. While these men probably received no money from your concert tickets, they certainly did from any and all album sales. "American Idiot" no doubt made these rich men even richer. Any message contained in this album is rendered at best hollow and at worst completely hypocritical.

The administration is no doubt well versed in the ways of bread and circuses.

To the reader lsc21361, don't be naive. I'm sure if we did a six degrees of separation on how you make your living, we could find a nexxus between you and Republicans. To think that Republicans (and Democrats) don't, in some way, profit from all of us is ridiculous.

Green Day should be commended for their views, and a brilliant album. And Joyce's piece is great.

Massive: you missed the point. You are absolutely right in claiming that the economy is a tangled web in which our money ends up in the hands of people who hold views with which we disagree. That doesn't engage my comment in the slightest. If I were out there selling faux-rebellion or righteous indignation while lining the pockets of the very people I criticize, then perhaps you'd be on to something.

I was more pointing towards the section of her article that claimed the administration had something to fear, that this music is emblematic of some undercurrent of dissent among our youth. Music isn't a pathway to change when it can be (and certainly has been) co-opted by the very establishment it means to upheave. Don't the Led Zep car commericals or the Bob Dylan bra ads tell you that? The author looks down on admittedly lightweight bands like Smashmouth without realizing Green Day is of the same breed....even as she attends their toothless concert with her teenager.

Why is it that people our age want to prove to our kids that we're cool and hip? Since when did behaving like a parent become such a terrible thing?

OK, I don't have kids, but if I did, I wouldn't be going with them to concerts.

When I was growing up, going to concerts waited until you could at least drive and then you go with friends. I would have died if I went to a concert with my parents.

Besides, for young people, going to a concert is a sign of independence, proving that you're old enough to start enjoying grown-up stuff, not hanging out with your parents who can't quite give up their lost youth.

It's cool that you enjoy the same music. I think that is important.

While I wouldn't let a 13-year-old go alone to a concert, I think it detracts from a young person's ability to enjoy independence by going to concerts with mom and dad.

After reading Joyce Millman's article about her and her son's love of rock 'n' roll, I've come to just this one conclusion:

Everything's going to be alright.

We pace and fret and moan about a future dominated by neocon "values" and corporate indifference to humanity, but I think it might just be all needless worry. What seems right now to be an all-encompassing political and cultural canvas set before us might actually turn out to be, when viewed at a distance of a generation or two, nothing more than a single unpleasant pixel in a much more appealing landscape. Let's hope so, anyway.

In the meantime, we probably shouldn't become too obsessed with the present situation. As Green Day themselves might say, take the long view.