Anyone who's followed Pearl Jam these past few years knows that the Seattle rock heavyweights are no fans of that George W. Bush guy. So when I read about AT&T censoring political content from the webcast of Pearl Jam’s recent performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago I wondered what the big deal was. Is Eddie Vedder stomping on a George Dubya mask still controversial five years later? Who hasn't bashed Bush at this point?

I wasn’t at the Chicago performance. But my homie, co-worker and favorite Pearl Jam fanatic, Elysia Smith was. So I turned to her for clarification, and she said that Pearl Jam dialed its usual political content way up.

On top of the usual Bush bashing, she said Eddie Vedder sang a song called “Say NO to BP Amoco" that he made up on the spot. It was related to BP dumping pollutants into Lake Michigan, and a petition also circulated.

And in a "Born on the Fourth of July" moment, the band invited a paralyzed Iraq war veteran onstage to deliver an emotional speech (the highlight of the show, Elysia said.) Vedder sang a song he wrote about the guy, who will apparently appear in a forthcoming documentary called “Body of War.”

A more detailed report of the show can also be found on the Rolling Stone site. But you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps if you were relying on the AT&T webcast.

So were the folks at AT&T being toadies for Bush and BP? Let's see if a company spokeswoman's response, quoted from the Chicago Tribune article I link to above, sheds any light:

"We don't have a policy in place to censor," said AT&T's Tiffany Nels. "We have a policy on excessive profanity. This was an honest mistake. There was no censorship intended."

Not really. But you can find the band’s take on the whole debacle here. And after you read it, I'm interested in knowing what you all think about this whole thing.