The snot-nosed punks of Sum 41 aren’t the first Canadian artists to pick a fight with the president — that honor belongs to Neil Young. But we’re pretty sure they’re the first to threaten the Commander In Chief’s life on a single. On Sum’s new “March of the Dogs,” frontman Deryck Whibley sings, “And now the president’s dead/ Because they blew off his head/ No more neck to be red/ I guess to heaven he fled.”
While calling out the President takes some balls — we’re sure Avril doesn’t want her husband interred indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay — Whibley almost immediately undid whatever bad-ass points he might’ve racked up for the stunt: When MTV asked Whibley to explain the lyrics, he waxed poetic, saying that they’re just a “metaphor for how Bush is so ineffectual and incompetent as a president.” It’s entirely possible that Whibley doesn’t actually know what a metaphor is, because the rest of the lyrics seem fairly straight-forward: “It may be I’m a pessimist/ But I say we need an exorcist, / The root of all evil standing tall, /Under god and above us all,” the song goes on to say.
Here’s the thing, Whibley: When you critique the President, call him “gay,” call for an exorcism, and then discuss his death, you aren’t constructing a metaphor. You’re using a different literary device: Rhetoric to incite violence. Punks pushing the envelope aren’t new (the Sex Pistols got in trouble for calling the British crown a “fascist regime”), but backing off your lyrics is weak. You’re supposed to be punk, so act like it.
What does this anti-Bush rant, metaphorical or otherwise, mean for Sum 41? We talked to a spokesperson for the house minority leader yesterday, who called the song “inflammatory and assinine” — perhaps best review Sum 41’s ever gotten. Could the Canadian rockers get deported? Hey, it’s happened before. Mr. Cat Stevens got shipped off to the U.K. when he tried to enter the United States in 2004. We’re all for free speech, but we wouldn’t be all that sad to see Whibley and his cohorts go.

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