Monday, July 19, 2004

DON'T COME AROUND HERE, NO MOORE: A few more lights switched off in America as their democracy starts to run on back-up power only. Linda Ronstadt was doing a set at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, when she broke off to suggest that everyone should pop along to the cinema to see Fahrenheit 9/11, and that Michael Moore was "a great American patriot" and someone who is spreading the truth." In response to this, some of the audience started to howl, tear down posters, and hurl food around. (There aren't many news reports which contain the phrase "people... tossed cocktails into the air", like a Darby and Joan riot, but this is one of them.) Now, the extreme over-reaction by Bush supporters to a fairly basic and not very controversial statement suggests something about how jumpy the right are in the US right now, and would seem to raise a question about how people four-square behind Bush's vision of freedom seem incapable of even tolerating the idea of people who may choose to exercise their democratic freedoms in a different way to their own, right? Erm... not according to Bill Timmins, president of the Aladdin hotel. He was so angry he wouldn't even let Rondstadt back into her bedroom, and had her thrown off the property:

Ronstadt's antics "spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it," Timmins said.

You might question why Ronstadt suggesting watching a popular movie is an "antic" which "spoiled" people's evenings - surely the real people who wrecked the night were the cocktail riot squad whose childish tantrums stopped Ronstadt from doing Desperado?


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

do you suppose the real reason people rioted and she was banned was because she was, in fact, linda ronstadt? i'd riot if i was stuck in a room with her singing.

Nigel R. said...

See

http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2004/07/you-mean-1100-people-didnt-storm-lobby.html

for later, less riotious version.

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