“George W. Bush is a pathetic idiot”: Michael Stipe shares his discovery with us.

Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M., spent a great deal of time explicating on Thursday night, good-naturedly turning Madison Square Garden into a lecture hall, writes NYT. Before the final song, Mr. Stipe couldn’t quite help but offer one last mini-sermon. “This,” he said of “Disturbance at the Heron House,” from 1987, “is my rewriting of the novel ‘Animal Farm.’ ” “Ignoreland,” from 1992, was his “barely adult reaction to the Iran-Contra scandal.” And “Man-Sized Wreath,” from this year’s album “Accelerate”(Warner Brothers), was inspired, he said, by the day in 2004 when, met by several hundred protesters, President Bush visited — or, in Stipe’s description, desecrated” — the grave of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “George W. Bush is a pathetic idiot,” he said, then looked forward: “I feel very, very hopeful with 2008.” How that optimism, not historically R.E.M.’s strong suit, will translate into song remains to be seen.