Posted on 07/14/2003 7:32:25 AM PDT by yankeedame
Last Updated: Monday, 14 July, 2003, 08:46 GMT 09:46 UK
Beyonce's 'grave dance' causes grief
Pop singer Beyonce Knowles should not have been allowed to perform a scantily-clad dance on the tomb of former United States President Ulysses S Grant, a historical group has said. The star danced in a "patently inappropriate" way on the steps to the tomb during a nationally-televised 4 July concert, according to Frank Scaturro, president of the Grant Monument Association.
The Destiny's Child chart-topper used "lascivious choreography" and her backing dancers were barely dressed, Mr Scaturro said in a letter to NBC, which filmed the performance.
Her latest single, Crazy In Love, is currently number one in the UK and US.
A certain decorum should have been observed from which popular entertainers are not exempt
Frank Scaturro Grant Monument Association And her album held onto the top spot in the UK on Sunday but was knocked off the summit in the US by Ashanti last week.
In his letter, Mr Scaturro wrote: "At that location, a certain decorum should have been observed from which popular entertainers are not exempt."
The letter also went to the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, and National Park Service director Fran Mainella.
Watch Beyonce perform Crazy In Love on Top of the Pops Ulysses S Grant was a Civil War hero who became the 18th president, between 1869-77.
His tomb, erected as a national monument in 1897, is in New York. The concert was part of the annual Macy's Fourth of July celebrations.
Also performing were American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson plus Sheryl Crow and John Mellencamp.
'More thoughtful'
Ulysses Grant Dietz, the great-great-grandson of Ulysses S Grant, said he did not object to most live performances, as long as the tomb was looked after.
But organisers could have been more thoughtful, he added.
"If they're doing a Fourth of July celebration and they're doing it at a grave of a president, maybe they should look a little more closely at what the performances are."
NBC and Beyonce were not available for comment and a National Park Service spokesman did not want to comment because he had not seen the letter.
if he came to our camp and said that, he'd get a better response than the fellow who recently spoke there and told us what a great leader mr lincoln was!
free dixie,sw
I thought Caucasian curling predated the founding of America, and thus the existence of "African-Americans" at all, but am no expert.
I said Caucasian-American.
Certainly this is an extreme result. But, many women - including my dear MIL - can't afford "practitioners" and must make do with hair straighter from Walgreens.
I do believe that, therein, lies the problem. Self-perm/self-straightening is, emphatically, a no-no, as far as I am informed.
Could not you and the wife (along with whatever other siblings your wife has) make your MIL a periodic gift of a decent hairstyling every quarter or so ?
Indeed, and more power to them. I admit that I find straightened hair on black women attractive. But, having seen first hand how artificial it is, for me it ranks up there with breast implants and toupees on the list of modifications which I'd rather not see done.
More power to you.
I do not think that my Dad, born and raised in California of Ohio-born parents and who graduated from West Point, ever had a nice thing to say about General Grant. He much preferred General Washington, as do I.
My Dad's Great-grandfather was a Union officer and my mother's served in an Alabama unit of the CSA.
My goodness... we just did NOT fight the Civil War in our family... it was JUST HISTORY to us.
I understand your situation here and I think you did pretty well with the situation.
Grant most likely liked to drink... so what? He is DEAD now.
I've lived in the South for 30 years. I, nor anyone else in my entire family, currently does, or ever has, owned a single slave. I can with certainty say the same thing about my friends and associates.
I can also say with certainty that there are lots of other people like myself who are a lot sick and tired of taking s**t from northern liberals like yourself, whose only knowledge of the people and culture of the South comes from New York Times opinion pieces that literally ooze hatred and condescension for anyone who chooses to live down here. Contrary to what your oracle of societal knowledge Maureen Dowd says, all Southerners are not toothless, illiterate troglodytes who obsess over "keeping the colored down," all the while banging our Bibles when we're not beating our wives.
I know we Southerners are totally offensive to your "refined" sense of aesthetics and culture (everything would be so much better if we were more like the French, right?). Too f**king bad - we're here, we're part of this nation and all your rantings about how everyone in the South is a racist slave owner wanna-be aren't going to change that one bit.
Silicone is no longer used.
No woman ever likes the hair she was born with. Whites and Aisans perm their hair, blacks straighten it, and who the heck cares? Whatever looks good - well, just looks good. I think Beyonce definitely looks good. I'm a woman (white), and I sure wouldn't mind looking like her!!!
Second, I have no beef with the South today, or southern people as a whole. Never have. I was just in Tennessee and Mississippi in May, and had a great time. Excellent food, nice folks for the most part (though I did, certainly, encounter the "Lost Cause" types, too). In fact, I have to go there to find decent food - you can't get decent Chicken Fried Steak or Grits north of the Mason-Dixon, or West of the Mississippi (well, maybe Texas, but...).
Third, I never qualified all southerners as "toothless, illiterate, troglodytes who obsess over keeping the colored down".
Fourth, Southerners are not totally offensive to my refined (that comes with a guffaw...there's very little about me that's "refined") sense of aesthetics and culture.
Fifth, you'll notice my argument was with the "Lost Cause" adherents, those Southerners who look back, all weepy-eyed, at the "Moonlight & Magnolia" days of the South, and think they would be better off if those days returned. The one's who think the South was "right" and should have won the war. The system they "yearn" to return to, was one built upon enslavement of human beings. They think it was right to fight for that, or worse, to fight for "states rights" in disregard of the issue. Those people I have a problem with.
But I'm not one to mistake all Southerners as part of the "Lost Cause" crowd. But the "Lost Cause" mentality is pervasive among a certain subset of the population, and that's what I was talking about.
It's the South that held onto the war. I believe that's why in Civil War circles, 90% of the talk is about the Southern generals, the battles that resulted in Southern victories, and the "if only" scenarios.
As a Civil War addict, I get tired of the attention and focus placed on the South, and when I encounter "Lost Cause" adherents that seek to demean the Union side, I take them on, and I stand up for the side that won.
The underlined part of your quote was EXACTLY what my dear white Momma meant when she told her white children "Don't you get uppity with me!" I just had no idea it was a "charged" word, until, like I said, I saw that old episode of Benson.
I agree with the other poster who thought it was a shame that the word had such a bad rap, because (racial overtones aside) it's really pretty unique and conveys a very specific meaning.
"Those trailer trash Clintons got all uppity and thought nobody would mind they stole that furniture from the White House."
BTW, thank you for the history behind it.
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