The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."
Senator Patty Murray (above) is the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Last week, her office issued the following:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Murray Press Office
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013
(202) 224-2834
VETERANS: Murray Applauds Passage of Veterans Cost-Of-Living Increase
Bill will result in more money in the pockets of millions of veterans across the country
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) announced
that a bill she co-sponsored to provide a Cost-of-Living Adjustment
(COLA) for America’s veterans passed the U.S. Senate Monday by unanimous
consent. The COLA for veterans will match the annual increase provided
to Social Security recipients which CBO estimates will be 1.5 percent.
The Veterans COLA affects several important benefits, including
veterans’ disability compensation and dependency and indemnity
compensation for surviving spouses and children. It is projected that
over 4.2 million veterans and survivors will receive compensation
benefits in Fiscal Year 2014.
“Particularly in this difficult economy, our veterans deserve a boost in their benefits to help make ends meet,” Senator Murray said.
“We have an obligation to the men and women who have sacrificed so much
to serve our country and who now deserve nothing less than the full
support of a grateful nation. A COLA increase will help bring us one
step closer to fulfilling our nation’s promise to care for our brave
veterans and their families.”
The COLA is designed to offset inflation and other factors that lead to
the rising cost of living over time. The COLA rate is based on the
Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index.
Last week, a group of six US Senators wrote an open letter to US President Barack Obama regarding Iraq.
Oct292013
Washington, DC – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ),
Carl Levin (D-MI), James Inhofe (R-OK), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Bob
Corker (R-TN), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today sent the following letter
to President Obama about Iraq as Prime Minister Maliki visits
Washington. The text of the letter is below.
October 29, 2013
The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama: We are deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Iraq. As
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Washington this week, we
urge you to press him to formulate a comprehensive political and
security strategy that can stabilize the country, enable Iraq to realize
its vast potential, and help to safeguard our nation’s enduring
national security interests in Iraq. By nearly every indicator, security conditions in Iraq have
dramatically worsened over the past two years. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has
returned with a vengeance: It has regenerated the manpower, terrorist
infrastructure, resources, and safe havens to sustain and increase the
tempo and intensity of attacks and to penetrate deeper into all parts of
Iraq than at any time in recent years. Indeed, an analysis this month
by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found, “In 2010, the
low point for the al-Qaeda effort in Iraq, car bombings declined to an
average of 10 a month and multiple location attacks occurred only two or
three times a year. In 2013, so far there has been an average of 68 car
bombings a month and a multiple-location strike every 10 days.” The
United Nations estimates that more than 7,000 civilians have been killed
in Iraq thus far this year—a level of violence not seen since the worst
days of 2008. What’s worse, the deteriorating conflict in Syria has enabled
al-Qaeda in Iraq to transform into the larger and more lethal Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which now has a major base for
operations spanning both Iraq and Syria. As the situation in both
countries grows worse, and as ISIS gathers strength, we are deeply
concerned that Al-Qaeda could use its new safe haven in Iraq and Syria
to launch attacks against U.S. interests and those of our friends and
allies. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Maliki’s mismanagement of Iraqi
politics is contributing to the recent surge of violence. By too often
pursuing a sectarian and authoritarian agenda, Prime Minister Maliki and
his allies are disenfranchising Sunni Iraqis, marginalizing Kurdish
Iraqis, and alienating the many Shia Iraqis who have a democratic,
inclusive, and pluralistic vision for their country. This failure of
governance is driving many Sunni Iraqis into the arms of Al-Qaeda in
Iraq and fueling the rise of violence, which in turn is radicalizing
Shia Iraqi communities and leading many Shia militant groups to
remobilize. These were the same conditions that drove Iraq toward civil
war during the last decade, and we fear that fate could befall Iraq once
again. We therefore urge you to take the following steps as Prime Minister Maliki visits Washington: First, we believe the Prime Minister’s visit is an important
opportunity to reengage with the American people about the continuing
strategic importance of Iraq. Though the war in Iraq is over, Americans
need to understand that the United States has an enduring national
security interest in the development of a sovereign, stable, and
democratic Iraq that can secure its own citizens and territory, sustain
its own economic growth, resolve its own internal disputes through
inclusive and pluralistic politics, and cooperate as a strategic partner
of the United States—a vision of our relationship that was best
expressed in the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement. Second, we urge you to make clear to Prime Minister Maliki that the
extent of Iran’s malign influence in the Iraqi government is a serious
problem in our bilateral relationship, especially for the Congress.
Published reports demonstrate that the Iranian regime uses Iraqi
airspace to transit military assistance into Syria to support Assad and
his forces. Furthermore, attacks against the residents of Camp Ashraf in
Iraq are reprehensible, especially because the Iraqi government pledged
to protect these people. Prime Minister Maliki must understand that
actions such as these need to stop. Not only do they make it difficult
for Iraq’s friends in the United States to build public support,
especially in the Congress, to enhance our strategic partnership, but
they also undermine Iraq’s standing as a responsible member of the
international community. Third, we encourage you to step up our counterterrorism support for
Iraq. It is in our national security interest to enhance the
effectiveness of Iraq’s security forces, especially through greater
intelligence sharing. However, in addition to our aforementioned
concerns, we must see more evidence from Prime Minister Maliki that U.S.
security assistance and arms sales are part of a comprehensive Iraqi
strategy that addresses the political sources of the current violence
and seeks to bring lasting peace to the country. This leads us to the final and most important point that we urge you
to stress with Prime Minister Maliki: If he devises and implements a
real governance strategy for Iraq, the United States is ready to provide
the appropriate support to help that strategy succeed. Iraq’s
challenges will never be solved through security operations alone.
Indeed, as the United States learned through its own hard experience in
Iraq, applying security solutions to political problems will only make
those problems worse. It is essential that you urge Prime Minister Maliki to adopt a
strategy to address Iraq’s serious problems of governance. Such a
strategy should unite Iraqis of every sect and ethnicity in a reformed
constitutional order, based on the rule of law, which can give Iraqis a
real stake in their nation’s progress, marginalize Al-Qaeda in Iraq and
other violent extremists, and bring lasting peace to the country. To be
effective, an Iraqi political strategy should involve sharing greater
national power and revenue with Sunni Iraqis, reconciling with Sunni
leaders, and ending de-Baathification and other policies of blanket
retribution. It should include agreements with the Kurdistan Regional
Government to share hydrocarbon revenues and resolve territorial
disputes. And it requires a clear commitment that the elections
scheduled for next year will happen freely, fairly, and inclusively in
all parts of Iraq, and that the necessary preparations will be taken. If Prime Minister Maliki were to take actions such as these, he could
cement his legacy as the leader who safeguarded his country's
sovereignty and laid the foundation for the new Iraq. In this endeavor,
Prime Minister Maliki and our other Iraqi partners would have our
support, including appropriate security assistance, and we would
encourage you to provide U.S. diplomatic support at the highest levels
to help Iraqis reach the necessary political agreements before the 2014
elections. However, if Prime Minister Maliki continues to marginalize
the Kurds, alienate many Shia, and treat large numbers of Sunnis as
terrorists, no amount of security assistance will be able to bring
stability and security to Iraq. That is not a legacy we want for Prime
Minister Maliki, and that is not an outcome that would serve America’s
national interests.
Sincerely,
John McCain Carl Levin James M. Inhofe Robert Menendez Bob Corker Lindsey Graham
It
was the day before Eid al-Adha, the holiest day in the year for
Muslims. At 2:45 a year ago on a clear October afternoon in Ghundi Kala,
a village in North Waziristan, Pakistan, 68-year-old Mamana Bibi was
picking okra in her family’s field alongside her five grandchildren.
They noticed U.S. drones flying overhead. They were used to that —
the drones are often there. Her granddaughter Nabeela, 8 years old,
described what happened next:
“First it whistled. Then I heard a ‘dhummm.’ The first hit us, and
the second, my cousin. There was an explosion. We were scared, and I ran
home. It was dark in front of our house. They brought me to the doctor
in the village who gave me first aid. I was not scared before, but now,
when the drone is flying, I am scared of it.” (democracynow.org, Oct.23)
Mamana Bibi was blown to bits. Pieces of her body were strewn around
the field. When her children raced to the scene, another missile struck a
few feet away. Her grandchildren were wounded, including 3-year-old
Safdar, whose chest and shoulder bones were broken.
In July 2012, in that same Pakistani province, chromite miners, a
woodcutter and a vegetable seller had gathered in a hut to talk and to
cook their meal. The first drone missile killed eight. When people ran
to the scene to rescue the wounded, another missile exploded, killing 10
more. (Reuters, Oct. 22) The dead included a 14-year-old boy.
“Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces,” Amnesty International quoted
one witness as saying. “We started to panic and each person was trying
to run in a different direction.”
“Some people lost their hands. Others had their heads cut off. Some
lost their legs. Human body parts were scattered everywhere,” said a
resident of Zowi Sidgi village, where the attack occurred.
The U.S. has conducted 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004.
Local media report that close to a thousand civilians have been killed.
Drones enable imperialist war, particularly “secret” wars like in
Pakistan and Yemen. They are a delight to the generals and the
politicians and of course the corporate masters that they serve. They
are designed to prevent sparking the kind of mass opposition they faced
from their oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s not that the U.S. rulers mind sacrificing the lives of soldiers.
But drones offer a new feature to their immense arsenal — no witnesses
to their slaughter. There are no “embedded” reporters who might blow the
whistle on an atrocity, no soldiers or pilots who might spill the
beans. There is only a drone operator in a chair on some military base.
Whole communities are terrorized by these fearsome weapons, largely
unreported by the world’s press.
Reports by the locals who witness these attacks are dismissed out of
hand. If the U.S. talks about the drones’ civilian casualties, they
speak of a “tiny handful.”
When Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by
Taliban gunmen, criticized drone attacks in a meeting with President
Barack Obama, her remarks were largely ignored by the press.
“I also expressed my concern that drone attacks are fueling
terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to
resentment among the Pakistani people,” she said.
“U.S. counterterrorism actions are precise, they are lawful, and they
are effective … we are choosing the course of action least likely to
result in the loss of innocent life,” claims White House press secretary
Jay Carney. But studies by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
and other organizations put a lie to that. In the HRW report titled
“Between a Drone and al Qaeda,” two drone attacks it examined in Yemen
killed “indiscriminately” in violation of the laws of war.
Many other reports indicate the same thing — thousands have been killed by these remote-control devices.
On Oct. 29, people in the U.S. will finally be able to hear from the
victims of drone attacks. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) will conduct a
briefing of Rafiq ur-Rehman and two of his children, Zubair and
Nabeela, will describe the drone attack that killed their grandmother,
Mamana Bibi.
These drones, along with the rest of the dreadful weapons that U.S.
imperialism unleashes on the poor around the world, must be eliminated
now.
Articles copyright 1995-2013 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved.
I dwell on this because the drone program in its conduct takes on the character of a rogue operation at the highest levels of government. Secrecy is the touchstone for ascertaining illegality, usurpation, moral turpitude in its fullest political sense: the absolute negation of human feeling toward others, justifying, in the depths of nihilism, annihilation-on-the-spot. CIA, JSOC, Blackwater (whatever its new corporate name), may be target-hunting in country, but the trigger releasing the drone missile is 8,000 miles away, a guy seated in plush surroundings probably munching a sandwich. The process of dealing death is so completely segmented that none involved has to feel pangs of conscience, assuming conscience to begin with, a big assumption when State-sponsored murder is an exercise in routinization under the banner of Protecting the Homeland.
Only one truest this week? Well at least Norman Pollack was deserving. Why only one? We got distracted. As we were publishing, we noted the error. At which point, Ava hollered, "Oh, hell no! We're not spending 30 minutes debating who gets the other truest." So we didn't.
There was a section of this editorial that I (Jim) really liked but we cut. I was for the cut. But I brought in the film St. Elmo's Fire, specifically when Judd Nelson is getting a blow torch and Andrew McCarthy says, "Do not give that man a blow torch!" I liked it but it took the editorial in another direction.
They were pissed about the roundtable. Ava and C.I. had written this and wanted to go straight into their TV piece. They were tired and felt they didn't have a lot of time to waste. (Before they'd be too tired to write well.) This is an outstanding piece on Linda Ronstadt's new book. See the roundtable for more on this but it's not what they thought they were going to write about the book. They really do debate and explore as they write.
I happen to like this piece by Ava and C.I. They hate it. 'But they hate everything they write!' You are correct. And I pointed that out to them which caused them to reply, "We hate this one more than anything else we've ever written here." Okay then. For others, I think they'll enjoy Ava and C.I.'s look at Dracula and Charlie Rose.
After the roundtable, I demanded we all immediately work on this piece before it went stale. Ty and Jess fact checked the piece (thank you). We think it's an important piece and we hope you like it. We doubt many others -- if anyone -- has written about the assassination the way we do here.
In the roundtable, Jess mentioned we were hoping to do a film article. Didn't happen. Couldn't pull it together. We saw the Google and quickly thought this could sub for the missing article.
The roundtable. Again, Ava and C.I. wanted to write their TV piece. The up there is, when they're pissed, they apparently don't care about not speaking too much. I'm not saying, "They spoke too much!" But they've never spoken this much, have they? They didn't want to take part and they just didn't care. But that actually makes for a more informative roundtable.
C.I. repost. And we're missing something so we need to stop the note and look. Okay, a Workers World repost is not here. We don't know what happened. We had copied and pasted one. Who knows. We'll include them next week. But this piece by Teresa Gutierrez is what we had planned to include this edition.
Blood thirsty Nouri al-Maliki refused to appoint anyone to head the security ministries so that he could control them. And we've seen how that end of 2010 decision has worked out: Increased violence.
In fact, you can add the total dead from violence in 2010 and 2011 together and you're just 1,000 short of the 2013 total so far.
Anyway, could you confirm or deny that Iraq has agreed to renegotiate
strategic arrangements that they had with you in view of the uptick of
the violence that is taking place right now, such as perhaps supplying
them with drones, or in fact the U.S. using drones to go after terrorist
camps? She pleaded ignorance.
In supporting Asaib al-Haq, Mr. Maliki has apparently made the risky
calculation that by backing some Shiite militias, even in secret, he can
maintain control over the country’s restive Shiite population and,
ultimately, retain power after the next national elections, which are
scheduled for next year. Militiamen and residents of Shiite areas say
members of Asaib al-Haq are given government badges and weapons and
allowed freedom of movement by the security forces.
What do you think Nouri would use drones for? Your best guess is to torment the Iraqi people.
Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "I See Ba'athists."
Linda Ronstadt's is know for being the voice of seventies radio in a way that few other men or women came close. In a better world, aspiring singers would have emulated her and not the vocal gymnastics of plastic soul. Simple Dreams, her new autobiography, charts the cost it takes to earn that voice as well as how quickly you can lose a voice worth listening to -- even in the book you write yourself.
Looking back on her career, Ronstadt's most important imparted lesson is you can't grow stagnant.
She grew up in a family with musical diversity at a time when even top forty radio offered a bit of diversity. Performing live led her to California and folk rock gave Ronstadt her first hit ("Different Drum"). She could have stayed with the same formula but didn't.
She sought out songs that really spoke to her. Anna McGarrigle's "Heart Like A Wheel" was one such song but it was difficult to get support for recording it. (Producer Peter Asher would hear her performing it live and the song would go on to be the title track of her first chart topping album.) Finding the material that moved her was not step two and meanings, not beats, were part of that important search.
Surroundings also shaped her sound. She acknowledges that the popularity that propelled her from club performances to arenas impacted the music because so much was getting lost in the shift. Her number one hit, "You're No Good," also resulted from the demands of performing. She needed an uptempo song to close with and this Betty Everett 60s classic suited that need. A major reworking of the song resulted in Linda's biggest hit.
Before the seventies were over, she was exploring three-part-harmony with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. This would eventually lead to an eighties country chart topping album (Trio) and a 1999 sequel that went top ten on the country charts (Trio II). The eighties would find her performing live in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park and then on Broadway (big change, Patricia Routledge was replaced with Estelle Parsons on Broadway in the role of Ruth) and then in the film (Angela Lansbury took over the role of Ruth). She'd follow that succeess (Tony and Golden Globe nominations) with the far less successful performance in La boheme.
But by then, she'd found a new recording passion: torch songs. 1983's What's New would be a breakout success. The follow up, Lush Life, less so. By the time For Sentimental Reasons was released (1986), she was trying her fan's patience. That's not noted. It should be.
Pursuing your muse is important. And Linda learned much from the three albums of torch songs and the mariachi Canciones de Mi Padre and the country and western Trio that followed. But five albums of doing everything but what your fans want?
In 1989, Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind found her returning to modern pop and it was a hard sale. Radio would have to create hits before the album really started selling. It would have been nice if Linda could have reflected on that.
How do you go from a string of number one albums, being crowned the singer of the decade, selling out arenas and stadiums, to left without an audience? And how does that feel?
Maybe it felt great.
Maybe it felt freeing.
Linda, for example, has as much a tortured relationship with the press over their calling her a country singer (in fairness, she raked up 7 top twenty country hits in the 70s) as she has with them focusing on her love life.
So maybe the 80s muse she followed -- operetta, opera, big band, Spanish-language mariachi and country and western -- was a liberating grenade that took out all expectations?
But by the 90s, there's a tone, a slight trace, of what happened. It's never fully formulated or outright stated. It's just there in the same way her long love of animals is just there. (See the passage where she refers to sneaking her favorite ballads onto the albums -- she's making a comparison to when she'd sneak in medicine to her dog. But she doesn't mention the dog and readers may be left confused.)
If you're going to write about how you kept growing artistically, you also need to note how much the growth cost. Joni Mitchell, for example, has never shied from explaining how fame turns on you.
Linda never shies from Joni and mentions her in passing several times in the book.
Linda's three torch albums followed Carly's 1981 release. Linda wouldn't be the last to copy Carly. But in a book of grace and praise, Ronstadt's failure to credit Carly stands out. We know why it happened.
Linda didn't want to make waves.
Ever since James Taylor's crazy mother Gertrude went ballistic over a photo of Carly and James singing live on Martha's Vineyard -- a photo that revealed just how old and ugly James was -- he's really demanded that friends not mention Carly. (For the record, James Taylor's Mommy issues rival those of Norman Bates.)
Linda didn't want to make waves.
Too bad. It hurts her book.
To her credit, Linda doesn't foam at the mouth with school girl lust over Taylor the way Carole King did (see "Carole King's Conditioned Role and Desire (Ava and C.I."). But her failure to even acknowledge Carly will be seen as bitchy by many.
That's because the two aren't just peers, they're often tossed up against each other in fan discussions (such as here). This would have been a great time for Linda to have made clear there was no rivalry. The press was trying to create one just last year in coverage over the two women being signed to write their autobiographies.
But they are peers.
And it's time women stopped playing so stupid.
Linda will get into The Rock &; Roll Hall of Fame (she's on the list of nominees) and will become one of the few women to do so. Would she have (finally) made the list were it not for her revealing she had Parkinson's in August? Maybe not. There's been no push for Linda until now.
But the reason so few women are in The Hall?
Sexism. That includes women playing into it.
As long as some women vie for the token role in a male defined world, women will be under-represented in all walks of life including artistic recognition.
Women need to start linking with their peers when they write books. They need to create a team. That's what the guys and their fan boys have done.
Women could and should do the same.
And a sense that they have each other's back would go a long way towards helping all women.
Linda should know that. When she was doing her torch song albums, Rickie Lee Jones publicly mocked her and what Rickie saw as Linda's failed attempts at singing jazz. As a result of a number of other issues -- including Linda performing in South Africa during apartheid -- people were lining up behind Rickie. The only thing that really sent the villagers home with their torches was Joni Mitchell speaking up.
It's not in the book, so much isn't. But it happened and Linda knows it did and Linda was grateful for Joni's support.
Unlike Linda, Joni Mitchell can, and will, speak of Carly Simon. It goes to strength and confidence.
Carly? There's not a more generous person when it comes to crediting her female peers. She's also extremely generous when it comes to crediting women who came before (such as Odetta and Judy Collins).
And that's why it's really starting to piss a lot of people off that so many are basically taking sides in a marriage which dissolved in 1983. It's why a number of us are starting to point out how sick and disgusting James Taylor is.
One of our favorite Carly songs is about how James tries to ban her name and her presence. From the opening verse of 1995's "Halfway 'Round The World."
Thank you for informing me That I was banned from Canada It comes as no surprise to me Last month it was Africa Since you’ve been ambassador There's trouble at the border La la la la la la la Halfway 'round the world
In the bridge, Carly observes:
For whatever reason You would keep me Halfway 'round the world I believe it's like a kind of compliment I must be quite a girl Quite a girl La la la la la la la Halfway 'round the world
Ir's an obsession on James' part.
Peers in the music industry are not sycophants like the late Timothy White, they don't need to behave like him. (For really bad biography, see White's book on Taylor and grasp how hard White worked -- at Taylor's request -- to render Carly and her ten year marriage to James invisible.)
Those who are choosing to tell their own stories and omitting Carly?
They look petty.
And they harm women in the process, all woman.
But to those who don't know what's going on, they just look petty.
And that's a shame because Linda's got praise for Emmylou and Dolly, and for Nicolette Larson and Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Loudon Wainwright III issued no gag order over his ex-wife Kate) and Maria Muldaur and Chrissie Hynde. She even shares a brief conversation she once had with Janis Joplin. But she can't even mention Carly's name. Which led a man who once played guitar for Linda to tell us we were falling for the trap, "She's not gracious. She's only praising women who aren't her peers.
And that's how some will read the book. As Linda herself writes, she wasn't very gracious to others during the seventies when she was crowned The/A Queen of Rock.
The omission of Carly damages the way Linda's seen. It also begs readers to wonder about other omissions.
There's her love life. Linda has every right to close the door on that and has many times. But if you're going to write about your affair -- and she does -- with Jerry Brown (California's perennial governor), you've opened that door and people have every right to wonder why you're not writing of others (for example, George Lucas -- which was a much more serious affair than the one with Brown).
There's her breaking the United Nations cultural boycott so she could go to South Africa. She wasn't the only artist to do so in the eighties. Tina Turner did. Tina Turner was flat broke and took on all the debt from the cancelled tour when she walked out on the abusive Ike Turner. Tina had no recording contract but she had the IRS at every concert grabbing their take of the house. By contrast, Linda was the most successful female singer in the US in terms of money. The year before had brought not only another chart hit, another hit album but also big money from the tour including big money from NBC to broadcast a concert live on their radio stations. So her decision to go to South Africa is not the same as others.
Equally true, Tina talked about it in real time, talked about it in her book I, Tina and has never shied from the topic.
Linda doesn't talk about her trip these days. And she doesn't write about it in the book. But Aaron Latham (Rolling Stone) covered the 1983 South Africa concert tour:
Linda Ronstadt is special, and yet she went to South Africa. She is
special, and yet she chose to perform in a reviled racist country. She
is special, and yet she gave six concerts in the cradle of apartheid. She
is special, and yet she lent her talents to an especially mean place. She
is special, and yet she allowed her very specialness to be exploited by
an outlaw nation in search of legitimacy. Her special price: $500,000.
[. . .]
"The last place for a boycott is in the arts. I don't like being
told I can't go somewhere. Like when they told Jane Fonda she couldn't
go to North Vietnam. Of course she should have gone to North Vietnam."
But, of course, Jane Fonda was not paid a half-million dollars to visit
Hanoi.
That may seem like ancient history to some but, if that's the case, so is the career that resulted in eleven Grammy wins for Linda. And while she stays silent, her fans try to grapple with her decision to break the boycott and perform in South Africa. When she appeared last month on Lenoard Lopate's WYNC show, a third of the listener comments were about her 1983 performances in South Africa. More commented on that than did on her Parkinson's.
Again, it didn't have to be this way.
But what a person doesn't say can be as important as what they do say and when you're omissions are notable, one leads to another.
The omissions, and there are many more, overshadow this slim but often charming book. Careful readers will not only notice the omissions, they'll notice that the singer really wanted to be an actress. For example, the book features 16 pages of photos -- far too many of her in The Pirates of Penzance -- and she writes at length about taping an episode of The Muppets' TV show -- writes at great length about that, far more space than she gives to recording any of her number one albums.
Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).
