The singer was an apologist for some of the world’s worst regimes.
The singer was an apologist for some of the world’s worst regimes.
K ris Kristofferson, a country music icon and Hollywood actor, died this past weekend, at age 88. Over a six-decade career, Kristofferson won three Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He also won a Golden Globe for his performance in the film A Star Is Born, in which he co-starred with Barbra Streisand.
But there is one award that Kristofferson should have won and for which he was clearly the front-runner. In the space of a few months, he managed to take the prize for Absolute Worst Political Timing of a Hollywood Celebrity.
I normally follow the principle of De mortuis nil nisi bonum, the Latin admonition that teaches “Of the dead, say nothing but good.” And Kristofferson led an amazing life full of accomplishment beyond songs. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves Boxer, a forest firefighter, and an Army Ranger who flew helicopters and turned down a chance to teach at West Point.
His obituaries in the major media don’t flinch from also reporting his problems with drug and alcohol addiction, which often contributed to a volcanic temper. But none of them delve into his decades of political activism on behalf of the Left.
Oh, there are passing references to his being “outspoken in liberal politics and human rights activism” (Washington Post). But they all dance around the truth. Kristofferson was fully marinated in the mythology of communist sympathizers.
In 1979, he played the first Cuban-American rock festival, in Havana. The high point for the hand-picked audience of government flunkies came when he dedicated a song to Fidel Castro, praising him, Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and Christ as great revolutionaries.
Later, he fell under the spell of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. A Washington Post profile in 1987 noted that the only spot of color on his all-black outfit was a small red button with the picture of Augusto César Sandino, the patron saint of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution.
Indeed, his dedication to the Sandinista cause was such that he was on a first-name basis with Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega. After one of his many visits to Nicaragua, he released an album called “Third World Warrior” that was chock-full of songs celebrating the hard-Left. The most controversial was “Sandinista,” whose lyrics included the words:
Sandinista, you can hold your head up high
You have given back their Freedom
You have lived up to your nameSandinista, may your spirit never die
Hold the candle to the darkness
You’re the keeper of the flame.
The album bombed, in part because the market for political songs is never vibrant. AllMusic called Kristofferson’s effort “simplistic and heavy-handed, a perfect example of politics overwhelming art.”
The album also flopped because by its release date of March 6, 1990, it was embarrassingly irrelevant. Just the week before, the people of Nicaragua had expressed their view of the Sandinistas by dramatically voting them out of office. The New York Times headline read: “Nicaraguan Opposition Routs Sandinistas.” Violetta Chamorro, the newspaper editor who defeated Ortega, was a supporter of the Contras and became the first woman head of state in the Americas. Kristofferson said very little or nothing about Ortega’s defeat. Nor did he ever comment on Ortega’s return to power in 2007 and his gradual reimposition of a vicious dictatorship.
I also recall another piece of bad luck involving Kristofferson and the collapse of communism. In the summer of 1989, I was working as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal when I was visited by Peter Janz, the first secretary of the East German embassy in Washington. Janz and I would sometimes meet to exchange perspectives on the reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev was undertaking in the Soviet Union. Janz represented his government’s view that Gorbachev was undermining socialism, and he defended the fact that some Soviet publications were being banned from distribution in East Germany. (He told me later that he had nothing but contempt for this ban.)
Janz’s mission during his visit to the Journal was to convince me to attend the October 7, 1989 gala celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of East Germany. “It will be a major event,” he told me. “Many celebrities will be there as honored guests, such as Yasser Arafat, Angela Davis, and Kris Kristofferson.”
I was unimpressed and puckishly decided to fire back with a bluff. I told him: “Herr Janz, I’m told by sources in the U.S. intelligence community that it will indeed be an important celebration. Especially since I am reliably informed that there will never be a 41st anniversary event.”
Janz turned white and stared at me for several seconds. He then reached across the table and grabbed my arm. “What is that you know specifically?,” he nervously demanded. It was at that point that I decided that if a high-ranking Communist Party diplomat had that reaction, then the end of the Cold War was coming. Indeed, just one month after the East Germans set off fireworks to celebrate their “permanent revolution,” the Berlin Wall fell.
Kristofferson never commented publicly on the fall of the Berlin Wall, but when challenged on his views he sometimes gave as good as he got. In an interview with Variety’s Chris Willman in the 2000s, he said, “I saw some book the other day called ‘Shut Up and Sing’ (by conservative Fox host Laura Ingraham), and my only feeling was: I am singing, dammit — shut up and listen!”
But a few years ago, when an actor raised the issue of communism’s collapse, Kristofferson pleaded the passage of time, saying that the collapse was in the past and there were other things to talk about.
We will miss Kris Kristofferson, but when it comes to politics, he was a classic “useful idiot” for some of the world’s worst totalitarians. His example stands as a cautionary lesson for all artists who decide that their celebrity entitles them to convince others of the virtues of a cause.