Phil Labonte and Tom Morello Kiss and Make Nice
Oh, Phil Labonte. Bless your little heart for continuing to give us stuff to write about. For serious. I see our relationship as a mutually beneficial one: you give us juicy quotes that bring in the page views and hence advertising revenue, and we give you the press to get your band in front of new eyeballs, a percentage of which will disregard your silly quotes and become All That Remains fans. Everyone wins!
It seems that Labonte and Rage Against the Machine Guitarist Tom Morello have come to a similar realization, or at least are giving the appearance that they have.
Today’s news stems from the fracas last year that erupted when Labonte called Morello “a communist and a fool” in response to Morello’s comments about then-Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s use of a Rage Against the Machine song on the campaign trail. Here’s Labonte’s most recent quote in an interview with Loudwire [via The PRP]:
Well you mentioned earlier that you’re very active on your social media networks. Not to mention your shirt — it takes a lot of balls to wear an anti-Obama shirt in NYC.
I specifically wore this shirt because I knew I was coming to New York. In fact the girls sitting down there gave me a look when I was coming to meet you and were like, “Look at his shirt” and I’m like, “Yeah, look at my shirt.” Nobody’s f—ing punk rock anymore, I was never a punk rock guy but punk rock is supposed to be against the machine, against the establishment.
I was talking crap about Tom Morello because how can you be Rage Against the Machine and then vote for someone that’s in the party that controls both the House and the Senate. So you’re against the machine but you’re voting for the candidate that is supported by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. That’s not raging against machine, that’s jumping into the machine’s pocket, that’s lining right up behind the machine.
Political correctness has permeated the society that we live in to the point where – it used to be okay to be crap, you’re free to be crappy. The freedom of speech doesn’t exist so you can say, “I hate the New York Jets or I love the New England Patriots or whatever” it’s so that you can say really controversial s—.
Morello got wind of the above quote, and while he could’ve pointed out that the Republican-controlled House of Represantatives most certainly did not support Obama (seriously, how does Labonte not know this??) he chose the high road by calling Phil “talented” (lol! surely Morello does not sincerely believe this… charm and disarm, charm and disarm!) and finding common ground over their mutual distaste for President Obama. Here is their Twitter exchange:
@tmorello well we can agree on that.
— Philip Labonte (@philthatremains) November 26, 2013
So, yeah, that happened. Hopefully some other foolhardy communists will soon find bones to pick with Labonte to give us something to continue writing about.
