Why are there so few songs about current events?

the problem is that most of the time when people try to take on polical events in their songs, they end up being these lumbering, heavy-handed anthems that no one cares to listen to. Also, I have the suspicion that while current events are important to some songwriters, there are few who can write a song about them from the heart and not have it come off as bad guilt-inflected high-school-grade poetry.

Why don't people just write non-banal non-heavy handed ones, then? (sincere question, BTW). The calypso songs I'm talking about don't come off that way at all - they're joyous and upbeat even when they're protest songs.

Today's artists are too in awe of Lance Percival.

Country music has songs about soldiers dying in Iraq/coming back shell shocked from Iraq--certainly moving on from boot-in-ass sentiments.