Posted on 07/20/2004 9:43:45 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
omething went awry at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas last Saturday night. Linda Ronstadt did what she has done at several concerts across the country this summer. She dedicated the song "Desperado"- an encore - to Michael Moore and urged members of the audience to go see his new movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Elsewhere, audiences have reacted to the mention of Mr. Moore by cheering, booing, walking out and sometimes glaring at one another in parking lots. At the Aladdin, a few audience members tore down posters, threw drinks and demanded their money back. According to one person who was present - William Timmins, the Aladdin's president - it was "a very ugly scene." Mr. Timmins promptly made it even uglier. He had Ms. Ronstadt ejected from the premises.
This behavior assumes that Ms. Ronstadt had no right to express a political opinion from the stage. It implies - for some members of the audience at least - that there is a philosophical contract that says an artist must entertain an audience only in the ways that audience sees fit. It argues, in fact, that an artist like Ms. Ronstadt does not have the same rights as everyone else.
Perhaps her praise for Mr. Moore, even at the very end of her show, did ruin the performance for some people. They have a right to voice their disapproval - to express their opinion as Ms. Ronstadt expressed hers and to ask for a refund. But if their intemperate behavior began to worry the management, then they were the ones who should have been thrown out and told never to return, not Ms. Ronstadt, who threatened, after all, only to sing.
The crowd did her a favor. She said she doesn't want to know if Republicans and/or "fundamentalist" Christians are in her audience, so people of that persuasion split. Unfortunately for her, the Aladdin understands that Republican money is green, same as a Democrat's.
If I set up to perform at the NYT lunchroom, I wonder how long little Pinch'd let me hang around.
Anyone? Anyone?
Ronstadt says she's uncomfortable performing just knowing that there are Republicans or Christians in the audience... and yet she demands that half the country NOT be uncomfortable with her singing a tender love song to a man who openly despises America?
Trite but true.... If it weren't for double standards, liberals wouldn't have any.
Timmins was correct in removing the source of the problem from the Aladdin. He hired Ronstadt to sing, not lob incendiary political grenades into the audience, resulting in a disturbance and angry customers.
It was WAY more than "a few." And they know it.
If Ms. "Roundsfat" had been telling an audience to tune into Sean Hannity's show from the stage and a left-leaning club owner had thrown her out the NYT would be praising the triumph of private property rights!
It was over half of the audience. Yes, the NYT knows that too.
What he believes is: This writer assumes that the concert-goers have no right to express political opinions from the audience. He implies that there is a philosophical contract that says concert-goers must applaud an entertainer only in the ways that the entertainer and he see fit. He argues, in fact, that an audience does not have the same rights as a celebrity.
If you were risibly pompous, condescending, and dull, he'd ask you to join their editorial writers.
I know --- left-wing celebrities often barely made it through school, have slept with just about any man or woman they met, never read a book from cover to cover or been able to hold down a non-celebrity type job --- yet they are just superior to the regular people. They think big money they got from being celebrities makes them better, more knowledgeable than people who work 8-5 type jobs. They believe money makes them better and smarter.
ROTFLOL "ejected from the premises..." Too funny. Sorry Linda, you're not in Hollyweird anymore!
It's called business.
Talk about intellectual bankruptcy. This is the most ridiculous defense you could come up with. The only scenario under which this take is plausible is if Ronstadt was giving a performance on her personal property. Otherwise, no, NYT, she was paid to perform a service - to sing, not use her stage to endorse a documented, proven liar. She had absolutely no right to use someone else's stage as a venue to spew her warped political opinions.
i didnt hear any uproar over the naacp "censoring" cosby.
Ding! Whoopi may have just found her next gig.
Ms. Rondstadt has said that she is conflicted over Christians and Republicans even being in her audience. They can't go out for a night's entertainment?
Who REALLY doesn't believe in free speech?
The customer is always right. To deliberately offend audience members (and embracing Michael Moore at this point in time is likely to offend some) is to insult the audience.
When I saw The Pretenders with the B-52s and Royal Crown Revue at a "shed", Ms. Hynde asked if there were any meater eaters in the crowd and then proceded to say we could all "choke on it". Her statements came before the much more publicized comments by Ted Nuggent at the same shed (he bitched about illegal immigrants who can't speak English).
Ted was banned from the venue. Chrissy was not (and no articles ever appeared even though she told a significant percentage of the audience to drop dead).
She was paid to sing a greatest hits package and didn't even do that (and she protested from the stage the advertising the show as such).
Rush resigned from ESPN; he technically wasn't fired. Here's the Slimes' editorial on the subject, which Pokey78 posted on October 2:
October 3, 2003
Breaking through the background chatter of television takes some doing. So ESPN apparently thought it might try something a little different. Instead of more sex, violence or even a nude sportscaster like the one who appeared on another sports show, ESPN brought in Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio commentator. He was there to give his hot-button views on one thing: football. And if the idea was to raise ratings, it worked. At least, it worked for one month.
As any television pro could have warned ESPN, it turned out that Limbaugh was not ready for the big leagues. He stands more in the class of Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder, who made insensitive remarks about blacks, and Michael Savage, fired from MSNBC for wishing AIDS on a gay caller. On ESPN's "Sunday N.F.L. Countdown" this week, Limbaugh said the kind of thing that wins him legions of tub-thumping fans on radio but that understandably offends most other people.
Talking about Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, he said, "What we have here is a little social concern in the N.F.L. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well — black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well." He added, "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve."
Limbaugh quickly resigned from his ESPN gig. But he insists there was "no racist intent whatsoever" and will not apologize, despite the outcry from McNabb's supporters, including an army of indignant Eagles' fans. In fact, Limbaugh insists that he "must have been right about something" to kick up so much fuss. He is not right, especially since football now has a number of excellent black quarterbacks, including McNabb. But that fuss brings the issue back to ESPN and raises the question of whether network executives will learn the right lesson. Limbaugh's appearance should make television managers realize that racially loaded remarks only demean debate. That is especially important since some in television may also focus on another piece of news: Limbaugh's last show had the highest rating for the program in seven years.
Another entertainer who's stage performance fell apart when it drifted into political rhetoric:
Stage Death
Remembering a painful evening with Spalding Gray
BY JOHN PENNER
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2004-04-15/theater.html
A year to the month before they pulled Spalding Gray's body from the East River, I saw Spalding Gray die. It happened on a stage in Houston.
The monologue and the man, ever hard to distinguish, had fused entirely. And vanished. All that was left was tragedy.
His show at the Wortham's Cullen Theater was "Interviewing the Audience," a work he often presented while the next monologue was gestating. He would bring members of the audience on stage, sit them down in a soft leather chair next to his and talk, as if they'd been invited over to Spalding's for tea. He'd ask questions, they'd respond, a dialogue would happen. He'd suggest they question him back. A new dialogue.
[snip]
The date of the performance was significant: March 21, 2003, a day after the United States had invaded Iraq. Gray began with a few spontaneous remarks about the war. His voice was strangely quiet, even for him. He sounded distant and weary. His words were barely political. Just wondering aloud, which is what he always did. Why is this administration so intent upon doing this? Lots of people are about to die: Why exactly is this happening? Questions a lot of us were asking ourselves at the time. He made a crack about Donald Rumsfeld, who is as easy and pleasurable a comic target as any figure in American political life since Nixon. Just ordinary wondering and musing.
But his audience was not of New York, or Chicago, or Austin, for that matter. This was Bush Country. And many of the good Republican Houstonians in the house began shouting and jeering, defending the war and its president, and objecting to any such talk goddammit during their night out at the theater.
"We're fighting for your freedom!"
"Love it or leave it!"
"We ain't here to listen to this!"
"Shut up and start the show!"
A number of the offended bolted for the exits, spouses and companions in tow. Antiwar advocates -- and there were quite a few -- shouted back at them. Not ten minutes after curtain, and all was mayhem. The unwitting instigator, the man on stage we had come to see, didn't seem to know what to do. He wasn't rattled so much as sad and confused. He looked like a man who, although his house was collapsing around him, lacked the will to leave his easy chair.
"Why are they leaving?" he asked us, sincerely, in the same distant tone.
Then the show began.
"Have you been following the war on TV?" he asked his first onstage visitor.
I don't recall the answer.
Gray responded back that he couldn't bear to watch it.
This infuriated some more among the audience.
He wondered aloud again, asking no one at all if war was necessary "just to get one man."
The house Republicans who remained joined the revolt. More jeering, more partisan bickering. People were leaving now in droves. Mike and I, from our vantage point high up and far away, watched in amazement as the seats emptied, the aisles filled, the chaos reigned below us.
By now, Gray seemed stunned. I had never seen such a thing at the theater, and I doubt he had, either. At least a quarter of his audience had walked out in protest, and he just sat up there alone, staring out at us. He looked scared, and otherwise vacant. He quit talking about the war. He quit talking entirely. For long stretches. He just sat, staring at us. And staring some more.
Someone mercifully broke the silence.
"Bring up the next guest!"
That was, after all, the concept of the show. And he clearly needed company up there.
With or without company, he was unable to perform. Spalding Gray was at a loss for words. A master at finding the theater in himself and others, he was now unable to carry a conversation.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" he asked one man.
A response came, and Gray was silent.
No follow-up, nothing about the man's relationships with these siblings, no attempt to find the humor in anyone or anything. Aside from the early Rumsfeld crack, I don't recall him attempting a joke all night.
"What do you do for a living?" was his next question.
That answer, too, was left to languish.
After another silent stretch, the visitor asked if he should go now.
Gray said he guessed so.
[there is more at the article link above...]
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