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Friday, July 23, 2004
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KICK ME LIKE YOU DID BEFORE/ I CAN'T EVEN FEEL THE PAIN NO MORE
Special Bulletin From the Refusing to Learn Desk
Image ruthlessly stolen from Hog on Ice
Insanity has been defined as performing the same action repeatedly and expecting a different result. Stupidity could also be be defined that way. Let's say you do something ill-advised, perhaps you dedicate an overwrought Eagles song to a corpulent, fact-allergic documentarian. This leads to the first interesting thing to happen in Las Vegas in years that doesn't involve getting eaten by a white tiger.
Let's further assume that your employer isn't interested in having interesting things happen at his establishment. He's afraid that the ruckus will frighten the overpriced prostitutes in the bar. He not only fires you, he denies you access to your room and has security escort you to the street.
However, the incident brings you the first burst of international attention you've recieved in well over a decade. Said corpulent, fact-allergic documentarian writes a note on his website that, despite its incomprehensible Constitutional analysis, is very supportive. The New York Times editorializes that the fault lay with audiences lack of political sophistication. After all, in the intellectual parlors of the East, the customer is always wrong.
So, how do you go about this?
If you're Linda Ronstadt, you do it again.
That's right. She had another mass walkout. For doing precisely the same thing that caused so much discomfort in Vegas. And here I was, thinking that "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." I have an almost childlike innocence in these matters.
To be fair, this time she tried it in a different political climate. Las Vegas is, if anything, apolitical. Last night, she dedicated the dopey song to Michael Moore in the Northern California city of Livermore. I've spent a fair bit of time n Northern California, and I've driven through Livermore. In a purely political sense, it's kind of like a cross between Vietnam and Sweden with better weather. If an anti-Bush tirade is going to play anywhere, it's reasonable to assume that Northern California would be that place. The counties surrounding Livermore are the only places in the state that voted to keep the insanely unpopular Governor Davis in office last fall.
It appears that Miss Ronstadt has failed to ask a very important question of herself. That question being, "I'm a musician and no one has cared much about my music for decades. I make the Who look cutting edge. Why should anyone care about my political views?" Had she have asked herself that very simple question, she may have been allowed to toil happily in obscurity.
But as I read the press account of her most recent debacle, one sentence jumped out at me. It lead to my having one important question of my own.
Concert-goers, who paid from $99 to $249 each for tickets, were well aware of the controversy, but said they just wanted to enjoy the songs.
Who in the fuck is paying three bills, after taxes, to see Linda Ronstadt?
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