"Where have all our heroes gone? " Mallick slams Ronstadt. Brutal

[Hoping4Change]

but IMHO right on the mark.


Where have all our heroes gone?
HEATHER MALLICK
Saturday, July 24, 2004


So lowered are our expectations that the Rosa Luxemburg of our time is now Linda Ronstadt....


Still, it shouldn't surprise me that the woman whose version of Long Long Time used to make adults cry has been reduced to singing to gambled-out golfers and their wifettes who throw drinks and steaks at the stage and shout "We wanna hear White Rhythm and Blues! Where's J.D. Souther? Were you sleeping with him? Was it great? We wanna be young again."....


We're all whores, but some of us are more enthusiastic than others...


She was happily performing at Sun City, that giant engine generating money for South African apartheid, when Steve van Zandt had a 1985 hit with Sun City and Nelson Mandela was still in jail. Now she thinks she's a political activist because she reproachfully dedicates Straighten Up and Fly Right to Enron?....


Where are the public figures, aside from Chomsky and Sontag and the great Steve Earle, making a genuine protest?


In this era, anyone attempting any kind of genuine artistry in the United States should be writing in their own blood. Instead they write in crayon. To paraphrase that song lyric by the original rebel Tom Waits, Bush is the man who sold Americans "a rat's asshole" and told them it was a wedding ring. I wish someone would just say it out loud.



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040724/MALLICK24/TPFocus/

[indigobusiness]

1. Interesting and gutsy

we need more hard hitting pieces like this...and less mutual admiration society bs.


on edit- Not that I agree with it all, but I admire its take no prisoner approach.

This part helps the perspective:

The Aladdin says it won't have her back. When Michael Moore wrote to the theatre to defend freedom of speech and offered to sing America the Beautiful onstage with Ms. Ronstadt, casino president Bill Timmins responded with a misspelled, illiterate letter that twinned Jesus and George W. Bush and insulted his own famously fat customers by saying Las Vegas has thousands of all-you-can-eat buffets that Mr. Moore might like.

And this part is just betrays a possible personal problem:

At least she's honest. I object when Diana Krall makes a CD with a cover that is identical to her simultaneous Chrysler ad, but no one else minds. I'm not surprised she married Elvis Costello, the man who once referred to the late Ray Charles as a "blind ignorant nigger." He did apologize, saying he had been drunk at the time, but couldn't he just have thrown up on himself or drowned in the swimming pool like a normal rock star? I still wince when I hear his women-hating songs.

---

Elvis Costello is neither bigot nor misogynist.

[Cha]

2. Oh she has an acid tongue all right....but , imv, she's

just blindly striking out with it. Thowing shit on the wall and seeing if it sticks.

Just because someone did something in 1985 doesn't mean that they can't have evolved by 19 years later.

Hell, I didn't even vote much until 2000..trying to make up for it for the last four year.

But who knows..if someone reads this that she poisoned with her pen ..maybe they will try to do more for this Country..


I know Margaret Cho wanted to go to the DNC like she was invited to..but then things got in the way and she graciously understood her disinvite.

[indigobusiness]

3. I agree

good point.

[Hoping4Change]

8. Yeah I think she may be over the top with Costello but like you

I get fed up with mutual admiration and also flogging people as brave when they are nothing of the sort. I think it really does dissrevice to people who suffer and toil to improve the world. I was one of the people who took offense at Stewart even obliquely comparing her plight to that of Mandala's.


At one it meant something to be radical now its just more marketing hype.



I'm with Mallick that praise that should be saved for the worthy not be heaped on the mediocre.

[Pepperbelly]

19. so who is in charge of the criteria for who is "worthy".

:shrug:

I don't think I want the responsibility and to the best of my recollection, I didn't delegate any of my own authority to this person Mallick.

Saying some one is or isn't worthy is a very devestating statement about their state of being and your own position to judge it.

BTW, Stewert's comments were totally taken out of context and there wasn't even, to my eye, an oblique comparison to the woes of Mandella.

[Hoping4Change]

10. BTW indigobusiness

I love the Orwell quote in your profile:

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Just brilliant.

[indigobusiness]

17. Orwell's work and message was a wake-up call

that has been sadly marginalized and underrated by those that don't wish to wake up.

[Hoping4Change]

20. Did you see the essay Carols' posted the other day?

Brilliant piece about people needing to wake up.


Sleepless in the Garden of Eden - By Schiffler


"I do not write this for the long-time activists – no, not for you brave souls who have been fighting the Medusa of oppression in all its manifestations for so many years that it is impossible to remember a time when your pockets were not stuffed with flyers or a time when your eyes were not filled with tears. No this is not for you, although God knows you deserve an essay of your own – one that captures the million miles of pavement you have pounded or the innumerable rocks you have pushed uphill.


...Too often, it has fallen to the same small circle of life-long activists to work the bucket brigade alone, shuffling back and forth to the well for yet another pail of life-giving compassion to douse the consuming flames of rampant greed and violence...


It is up to us a kindly, well-intentioned lot who have been slapped into consciousness by the repeated outrages, crimes and atrocities committed by the Bush regime to don the shining armor, each in our own way - big or small, enthusiastically or reluctantly, with brave heart or with trembling hands. And we must do it every day, rain or shine, even if evil seems very far away and the Garden of Eden spontaneously arises from some vast barren mid-western plain. We must not go back to sleep."

http://www.legitgov.org/essay_schiffler_sleepless_in_the_garden_of_eden_072304.html

[indigobusiness]

22. I did

very good.

[bpilgrim]

7. don't let your guilty conscious get in the way

"Hell, I didn't even vote much until 2000..trying to make up for it for the last four year."

:evilgrin:

peace

[buycitgo]

4. Kerry should make this the centerpiece of his campaign:

''Bush is the man who sold Americans "a rat's asshole" and told them it was a wedding ring. ''

[Hoping4Change]

13. LOL Right you are. That line needs national attention.

[indigobusiness]

16. I'm sure Boudreaux's would sponsor it.

www.buttpaste.com

[Hoping4Change]

21. LOL.

[maggrwaggr]

5. It's a pretty good piece, and I agree with a lot of it

but picking on Linda Ronstadt is out of line.

Linda's never picked up the sword of politics, she just expresses her opinion sometimes. She's just a singer and she knows it.

I, too, am outraged at the lack of outrage in this country.

[peace4all]

9. sure

She has always been sort of main stream, so when someone like her speaks out, even just a little, that is a good thing.

[bpilgrim]

6. Dig it! It's time for the LIMO-LIBS to START using that MIC

:bounce:

with a few exceptions it's MIGHTY QUIET from the RICH&FAMOUS from the CHEAPSEATS :evilgrin:

peace

[union_maid]

11. What a self-righteous grump!

It's great when someone speaks out. It's even better when they do their talking where someone other than the choir will hear them. I can dedicate my meatloaf to Michael Moore, or even blog about him, but no one's going to care. I'd much rather hear it from someone who's going to make headlines when they get thrown out of a hotel.

Thank you, Linda Rondstadt.

[demwing]

12. Its a shame that Ronstadt's comments are so exciting to us

But that's not Ronstatdt's fault.

Must we demean those who give because they don't give as much as we want?

Seems to me this writer's cause would be better served by refocusing on the real enemy.

[Hoping4Change]

14. I agree that its not Ronstatdt's fault her comments are

so exciting to us. But I don't agree that Mallick is demeaning Ronsdadt, she is simply pointing out that people shouldn't be so quick to hail someone a hero when its not warranted. Did Ronstadt know prior to her comment that she would be booed out of the Aladdin?


Heroes are those who know there will be a heavy price to pay yet find inner strength to go forward. Ronstadt was a victim, not a hero.

[demwing]

15. This isn't demeaning?

"Now she thinks she's a political activist because she reproachfully dedicates Straighten Up and Fly Right to Enron?...."

I would agree that Ronstadt is more a victim than a hero, except for that in theses days, just being a decent person makes you a hero.

And hell yes, that quoted comment above was rude and demeaning.

[Hoping4Change]

18. IMHO The remark is catty but doesn't debase Ronstadt:)