Friday, July 23, 2004
The story goes that Linda Ronstadt in her introduction to the song 'Desperado' before an audience at a Las Vegas casino made some comments praising Michael Moore and his film. This is said to have caused a near riot, with protestors throwing drinks and defacing posters, and half the audience booing and storming out. This reaction was the excuse the casino 'owner' had for escorting her off the premises, stating she'll never return. Didn't anyone else find this whole story bullshitty?:
Ronstadt is a known lefty, and has made the same comment at other venues with nary a word of protest. The audience could hardly have been surprised when she made this kind of remark.
Las Vegas isn't known for the depth of its political feelings. In fact, experts on the city find this reaction to be bizarre.
Her remarks were about as uncontroversial as any mention of Moore could possibly be.
Ronstadt claims she wasn't thrown out, as if the whole story was embellished after the fact by the casino 'owner' (I write 'owner' as we all know who really owns all the casinos, don't we?).
The Republicans are terrified of Moore's film, as it has crossed the barrier from being a film for Democrats to being a film popular and liked by a huge swath of Middle America. As Americans like the film, Republican operators are having no success depicting it as a partisan work of propaganda. People who see it are being exposed to questions about Bush that would never even be hinted at in the disgusting American media.
Immediately after the 'riot', as if they were all ready for it, the disgusting American media covered the story as evidencing the supposed gulf between Americans and these elitist Hollywood liberals, trying to claim that people like Moore and Ronstadt are actually driving people into the arms of the Republicans.
All of this generally fits into Republican propaganda, going back to Nixon's 'silent majority', that there is a vast and uncrossable gulf between the East and West Coast snooty elites, with their questionable morality and 'un-American' values, and the rest of the decent, god-fearing people who make up the vast majority of the population. It is not at all clear that Middle America is anywhere near as conformist as Republicans and some Democrats would have you believe.
It should be obvious that this whole incident was a Republican dirty tricks set-up, much like the Brooks Brothers Riot of Republican operatives who descended on Florida to pretend to be concerned citizens and stopped the vote counting in Florida before it could be determined that Gore had actually won. It also resembles the Hard Hat Riots of Nixon's time which were set up by Republican operatives who paid some of the rioters to make it seem that working class Americans were vehemently against the 'hippies' who were protesting the Vietnam war. The Las Vegas riot - if it in fact even occurred - and the reporting of the incident, especially the categorizing of it in strict Republican red-blue terms to show the supposed gulf between the Democrats and decent Americans, is almost certainly a creation of the Rovian propaganda mills. The Republicans are starting to panic a bit, as Moore has them spooked, so the dirty tricks are starting. What is sad is how easy it is for them to pull these stunts off. posted at 3:03 AM permanent link