My teenage son came home from school recently and was upset with the fact that in one of his classes, the teacher invited the students to solicit from their classmates opinions on “what they didn’t like about the President of the United States.”

Aside from the lèse majesté inherent in this assignment, the response of his classmates was revealing. One student said that there should be a law to prevent the government from “making war on other countries.” Another flatly claimed that George W. Bush was “trying to take over the world.”

A third student said that the war in Iraq was “pointless,” with the observation that “Uncle Sam is frowning.” A skateboarder with spiked hair would not stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, announcing that he “hated all countries.”

As disconcerting as these responses are—made by ill-informed and rebellious teenagers—they are cut from the same cloth as the infamous remark made by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks during a 2003 concert tour in England, when she announced that “we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

On the eve of the war in Iraq, this gratuitous insult, of course, did not play well in Texas or pretty much anywhere else. In scores of cities across the country, irate country music fans destroyed Dixie Chicks albums, country radio stations refused to play their music, and concert attendance in major southern venues dropped off sharply.

Since then, Maines offered a half-hearted apology, then reversed course and reaffirmed her, and I presume the group’s, dislike of Bush, even in spite of what they claim have been death threats. On their most recent album, they include a song called “Not Ready to Make Nice,” which is yet another defiant poke in the eye.

In TV interviews, the Chicks next tried to make the point that they have “outgrown their country audience” and have moved into mainstream pop-rock—a dubious, divisive and needless posture to take, since it has jeopardized important bookings on their tour this summer. A significant number of U.S. venues already have been cancelled, and the Chicks have had to fill in with concerts in foreign countries, where their anti-Bush nose-thumbing seems to play well.

Why these fine and talented musicians should feel compelled to antagonize their listening audience, incur reduction of their earning potential and tarnish their public image just to vent their dopey political opinions is beyond reason.

Like my son’s peers in high school, the impetus seems to be only the desire to attitudinize, to épater le bourgeois, rather than advance a serious discussion of issues. In fact, when the Dixie Chicks venture into such discussions during interview programs, they reveal their overall ignorance of political matters to the point of making themselves look foolish.

But artists and performers have long experience in preening themselves and their attitudes to their fans and the general public. Armed with little depth of understanding, or subtlety of perception, they blurt out their latest crazy or outrageous thoughts to the world, in the vainglorious self-delusion that people might take them seriously. In fact, the only ones left impressed are fellow choristers in the choir of the converted.

It is an unfortunate sign of our cultural decadence that media celebrities are paid any attention at all, apart from their individual performing talents. An entire cottage industry has emerged just to track their daily lives and public utterances. Tabloid TV shows and newspaper writers follow them seeking any kind of story, while paparazzi lurk in the weeds to take unauthorized photos.

In a new low, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the reigning king and queen of lowbrow entertainment, were purportedly paid $4 million by People magazine for exclusive photos of their new bastard love child to feed the bottomless maw for celebrity gossip.

More pathological are those celebrities who take political postures, and are used by clever politicians who bask in the reflected glow of sympathetic ideologies. Barbra Streisand, Adam Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, George Clooney and Jane Fonda need only let thoughtless inanities drip from their lips, whereupon bottom-feeding reporters lap it up and broadcast them to the four corners of the world. Politicos in need of public attention and cash have found a truly nourishing mother within the media celebrity complex.

They might as well troll the nation’s high schools for ideas, because like my son’s classmates, the level of critical thought is about the same.

Barrett Kalellis is a Michigan-based columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications, and can be reached at Kalellis@hotmail.com.