Cash shoots back at use of father's name for political 'agendas'

Award-winning singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, daughter of country legend Johnny Cash, has blasted the recent use of her father's name for political endorsements.

"It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father's name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so," Cash writes on her website in a blog posting, which does not identify anyone specific.

However, according to U.S. media reports, country music star John Rich, of duo Big and Rich, spoke about Johnny Cash at a recent rally for Republican Senator John McCain before launching into one of Cash's iconic songs, Walk the Line.

"Somebody's got to walk the line in the country. They've got to walk it unapologetically. And I'm sure Johnny Cash would have been a John McCain supporter if he was still around," Rich told a Florida crowd, according to the Washington Post and other media outlets.

"I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals, and even I would not presume to say publicly what I 'know' he thought or felt," Rosanne Cash wrote.

"It is unfair and presumptuous to use him to bolster any platform."

Last week, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne filed a lawsuit against McCain, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party for failing to obtain permission to use his song Running on Empty in a television commercial.

A spokesperson later said that McCain's campaign never ran a TV spot featuring Browne's song, saying the ad in question was solely the work of the Ohio Republican party.