http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&e=3&u=/nm/20040719/en_nm/people_ronstadt_dc
:roll: She pissed off right-wing gamblers. Oy vey!
That dedication angered some Aladdin guests who spilled drinks …
I spill my drink!
Ha, ha, ha. That line cracks me up.
That article leaves out the best part, which is Moore’s response to the incident:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1158278.htm
You see, for Mr. Moore, when you respond to a crowd of over four thousand people who paid to be in your establishment and are now angrily booing a speaker and tearing posters down off the walls, the only correct response is to explain to said dissatisfied customers how they have an inalienable right to Mr. Moore’s opinion. Giving paying customers what they want is completely beside the point; this is about principles, dammit!
I didn’t read anything in the article to imply that the entire 4,500 person crowd was out to destroy the place. Instead I keep reading “members of the 4,500-strong audience” did this or that.
Hell, if anything, why weren’t those members of the audience who “stormed out of the concert hall, tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air” kicked out first?
Hell, Moore’s right in this case. What kind of country is this where people are removed because they have an opinion that might cause a portion of those around them to become violent and destroy property, with no consequences for the vandals?
And what about the larger portion of the audience who was there to listen to her perfomance, but lost out because of the assholes who can’t respectfully disagree with an opinion, and instead use force and violence to silence anyone who disagrees with them?
What about those damned liberals?
Uh, no, it was conservative assholes. As always a Vocal Minority.
No no no, I’m talking about all those damned liberals that didn’t immediately destroy the thing that disagrees with the president - there really is no other course of action in a time of war ya know (except of course for taxcuts for the top 5%).
So Bill Bennett was taking a break from the tables, eh?
Vegas casinos are very about their image, and that includes not having unhappy patrons at a 70% profit lounge show (the entrance to which is conveniently located past every slot aisle and bar in the joint on the way in and out), especially for a headliner like Ronstadt. Every executive in that casino could be a producer in Michael Moore’s films, and they still would have tossed the bitch out on her ear after this.
Even Moore was boo’ed at by his own people at the Academy Awards when he took the opportunity to despoil the show with a political speech. By the way, the article says about a quarter of the crowd left before the finish. That’s over a thousand fuckin people.
EDIT: damn that picture is bad. What the hell happened to her looks?
The casino hired her to perform a show, not make political statements. I think its perfectly fine that they tossed her.
Quoted from National Review, for what it’s worth:
Mr. Goldberg –
My wife & I were at the Linda Ronstadt performance in question, at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, and quite frankly, Aladdin President Bill Timmins’ account of what happened is complete crap. There was mixed booing and cheering at Ronstadt’s pro-Michael Moore comment, and that was about the extent of the “bedlam” that supposedly broke out. I saw no posters being torn down or cocktails being thrown in the air, and if people stomped out of the theatre unhappy, it was because 1) that was the last song Ronstadt performed; it was her encore; and 2) she mainly sang her standards repertoire, with the Nelson Riddle orchestrations, and a large part of the crowd wanted to hear more of her rock-‘n’-roll stuff; she got the biggest round of applause for doing a lackadaisical run-through of her version of “Blue Bayou.”Frankly, my suspicion is that Timmins is way overdramatizing what happened, in order to justify giving Ronstadt the boot. It simply wasn’t that big a deal.
I’d like to mention here that Ms Ronstadt is now a hefty piece of womanhood, if you know what I mean? Perhaps they had to kick her out cuz she wasn’t 105 lbs anymore…