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in my opinion, the breakdown in judgement would come at the point where you paid to hear linda ronstadt sing, but that is a different matter....
look, if a venue hires a singer to perform, they do not control the nature of the performance itself. they might suggest parameters, but in the end they profit from the presence of the performer, who performs as a human being in a contractual relation with the venue that extends to the situation of the performance, not to the acts or speech acts of the performer within that performance.
if the contract stipulated "dont say anything that might offend the bourgeois nimrods who might be here", and the performer does so, then it is a breach of contract--but that is a contract that i cannot imagine anyone signing to begin with. and that is a separate matter as well.
if there was no such clause in the contract, then ending an entire concert series because of the tepid opinion ronstadt offered about michael moore is nothing other than censorship.
the venue profits from the the performance, from the fact of who is engaged as performer---the performer is not taken as an endorsement of the venue--he or she only shills for the venue insofar as his or her presence draws a crowd into the space. the space is a box within which the performance happens.
if every performer had to worry about offending anyone who might possibly be in or near the crowd at a performance, then i would imagine that you would have almost no performances. better to spin records. the delicate sensibilities of conservatives, in this case--which apprently only extend to hearing sentences they do not like, but not to matters like being lied to to justify war, a corrupt republican administration, the aborgation of basic civil liberties in the name of a war on terrorism, or to the radical expansion of the prison system as source of cheap labor for corporations for example---are less likely to be offended if you just play records.
but then, who pay to show up would show up for that shit?
even an audience willing to pay to hear linda ronstadt in 2004 do nelson riddle tunes would not do it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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