Credit: WENN
The US elections are coming up, and I’m watching them closely because they are conducted so differently to the ones in my home country.

In Australia voting is compulsory, probably because as a whole the country is quite apathetic about politics. If you didn’t have to vote it is possible not enough people would submit votes to give an accurate result.

The other interesting element is that in America everyone seems to have an opinion about who should win, no one is scared to wear their vote on their sleeve. In Australia asking someone who they voted for is considered very bad manners.

What even the most obnoxious person in any country would consider bad manners is someone telling someone who they should support. Roseanne Barr did it yesterday, now here comes country singer John Rich, telling the world that if Johnny Cash were alive today, he’d vote McCain.

Johnny Cash’s daughter Roseanne responded on her website:

“It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so,” Cash said on her Web site.

According to media reports, Rich told the crowd: “Somebody’s got to walk the line in the country. They’ve got to walk it unapologetically. And I’m sure Johnny Cash would have been a John McCain supporter if he was still around.”

Rich then sang Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.”

“I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals,” Rosanne Cash said on her site, “and even I would not presume to say publicly what I ‘know’ he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation.

“It is unfair and presumptuous to use him to bolster any platform,” she continued. “I would ask that my father not be co-opted in this election for either side, since he is clearly not here to defend or state his own allegiance.”

Reuters

Go ahead and vocally support your chosen presidential candidate, but don’t attribute a dead man’s values to a cause. It is disrespectful to his family. It also makes the candidate seem a little desperate, needing to drum up business from a dead man.

Note by Celebitchy: Country singer Toby Keith recently announced his support for Obama. However, commenters on the Huffington Post note that he’s donated to Republicans in the past. Keith has also drawn criticism for what many people note is a pro-lynching song, (warning on that link – it includes disturbing lynching images) “Beer for My Horses.”

Maybe we would be a little better off if celebrities and musicians would do it the Australian way, as Helen mentions. I’m all for supporting your candidate but am getting a little tired of the celebrities publicly arguing over it. That’s what a Democracy is all about I guess – people complaining.