I live in Nashville and while I don't personally know Steve Gill, he is a pretty good radio host, and like Steve Earle, is not afraid to say what he thinks. It just happens that this time, the two Steves disagree.

I am not a big fan of Steve Earle but I do appreciate that he is not afraid to speak his mind, even if I don't necessarily agree. (I did sell him a futon once, and he's a pretty nice fellow. Very laid-back.)

We do that sort of thing in America, after all. Speaking up always carries the risk of annoying someone.

And songwriters tell stories. How is this one different from any other story told about a real person in a time of conflict? Writers have been doing that for centuries.

Ian Tyson took a lot of heat, too, for his song about Claude Dallas, who killed two federal agents when he was supposedly caught poaching. Dallas claimed self-defense, but he was the only witness left alive, and nobody bought it.

And what about all the songs about people like Jesse James and Billy the Kid?

Do they glorify murderers, or just tell a story? Telling the story doesn't necessarily glorify anyone or anything.

Mister, who is politically very conservative, surprised me the other night. He said of Lindh, he's just a disillusioned kid who got on the wrong path. And I can't totally disagree with that. (I think he said that, remembering perhaps some times when he was a disillusioned kid going down the wrong path himself.)However, it's my understanding that it's sort of Against the Law for an American citizen to join a foreign army and take arms against the US.

Maybe Lindh didn't know that. Maybe he did. Who knows. People write songs about current issues, and that's just the way it is.