The Rolling Stones have balls. I guess we knew that all along, and to some degree, that's why we love them, but they may have crossed the line this time. Generally, I'm more than pleased with both their new album, and their new tour, which I attended opening night in Boston, but honestly I just can't help getting pissed off every time I hear track 13 on said new album. The track is of course the highly controversial "Sweet Neo Con" which is just chock full of anti-American and anti-Bush statements.

Why does it piss me off? Well for one, it's just another case of an act I like forcing me to pay them to rip apart a country I love and a president that I support. But that's nothing new. Green Day, Springsteen, Pearl Jam and countless other acts have been forcing the little people to consider (and financially back) their political views for better or for worse for years. It's a silly concept if you ask me, taking political advice from a band that made their name writing songs about jerking off and doing speed (Green Day) or a multi-multi-millionaire who thinks he's just a blue collar, blue jeans wearing regular guy (Springsteen), but it's commonplace so that's not my beef.

I think my real beef with the Stones on this one is that they're treating us like we're idiots. The opening verse of the song sees Mick calling the unnamed "Sweet Neo Con" a hypocrite and says "You say you are a patriot, I think you're a crock of shit." Well let's look at patriotism.

Surely, Sir Mick Jagger, a Knight of the British Empire, must be considered a patriot, and I'm sure he considers himself one. But in reality, this is the same man that has been arrested for breaking the laws of his country on several occasions, and went so far as to flee the country along with his songwriting partner Keith Richards, in the early seventies in order to avoid paying income tax to his government. Real patriotic huh . . . did someone say hypocrite?

Now Richards on the other hand who co-wrote the song, wasn't impressed with Jagger's knighthood, and didn't think he should accept it. He said "I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment . . . it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a fucking paltry honour.'" So maybe he does have the right to criticize . . . or maybe not.

Richards has also recently been quoted, after the Stones refused to play Live 8, as saying he didn't want the band to be seen as political, he just wants to be seen as "a good band." Calling someone a hypocrite really can come back and bite you on the ass huh?

Anyway, now it's time to get to the truth of the matter. What has to be the most irritating aspect of the song is the way it forces you to listen to a bunch of fucking billionaires bitch about money. "It's getting very pricey, and who is going to pay." "One thing that is certain, life is good at Halliburton, if you're really so astute, you should invest in Brown and Root" and "Where has all the money gone?" are just a few examples of "Sweet Neo Con's" financially conscious lyrics.

Well, I have an idea as to where the money went. IT PROBABLY WENT TO PAYING $500 PER GOD-DAMN TICKET TO SEE THE FUCKING ROLLING STONES IN CONCERT! I find it offensive, that a band that literally charges $115 a ticket to sit in the last row of a football stadium and essentially watch them on TV, thinks they can get away with calling someone out for making money. It's about as hypocritical as humanly possible.

The Rolling Stones, like Halliburton, are a money making machine. The only difference is that one is headed by a 60-year-old man who is trying to rebuild a country recently freed from the grip of a ruthless dictator, and the other is headed by a 60-year-old man who makes a living shaking his ass and singing about sleeping with a "gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis" for the ten thousandth time.

And that's another thing, "gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis," "When you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac making bets on Kentucky Derby Day," "I rode a tank, held a generals rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank." This band used to write some incredible, literate, and intelligent lyrics. What's up with Neo Con's sing-song, nursery school rhymes like "I'm frightened out of my wits, and it's giving me the shits." God, the song is atrocious. It could be the worst thing they've ever recorded. Even the thing about the decapitated head in the freezer from Undercover was better. It just plain sucks.

I could go on and on but I, apparently unlike Jagger and Richards, understand that for the most part, political rants don't change people's minds. You either already agree with me, or think I'm a moron, and nothing I write is gonna change that. So in closing, I just want to look at the song's opening verse one more time, but this time, I want you to think real hard about Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as you read it.

"You call yourself a Christian, I think that you're a hypocrite. You say you are a patriot, I think that you're a crock of shit." Sweet Neo Con.