Once upon a time a rock star craving attention would simply bite
the head off a live bat. Generating that kind of buzz today can
only come by announcing one’s opposition to gay marriage.
Singer Michelle Shocked discovered this week that worse fates
await big-mouthed artists than rabies shots.
“You got to appreciate how scared folks on that side of the
equation are,” Shocked informed her San Francisco audience Sunday
night. “Once Prop. 8 gets instated and once preachers are held at
gunpoint and forced to marry the homosexuals,” she continued, “I’m
pretty sure that that will be the signal for Jesus to come on
back.” Shocked, and her shocked audience, laughed awkwardly at her
apocalyptic rant. The folk-rock singer then joked, “If someone
would be so gracious as to please tweet out ‘Michelle Shocked just
said from stage: God hates faggots.’”
On cue, that’s precisely what the ignorant indignant did.
Twitterverse Savonarolas chimed in: “hoe you better commit
suicide real quick.” The press compared her to the hateful Reverend
Fred Phelps. She strikes me more as a prophet — albeit, like many
seers, a slightly unhinged one — for anticipating that her audience
would willfully misinterpret her words.
An activist in Vermont organized a Change.org petition demanding
that club owners break agreements that they had entered into to
host the apostate radical’s concerts. “Freedom of speech and
artistic expression are critically important,” the petition reads,”
“but this isn’t about free speech. This is hate speech.” As it
stands, venues have canceled ten of eleven scheduled U.S.
performances. The lone holdout, a club in Madison, Wisconsin,
insists that they must wait on a decision from their boss when he
returns from vacation.
“WOW!” exclaimed the petition organizer. “The Telluride
Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado cancelled Shocked’s show
today. That’s right: Michelle Shocked’s entire U.S. tour has
evaporated within two days of her bigoted anti-gay rant.… But we’re
not done yet! Please keep signing and sharing so we can convince
European venues to follow suit and continue dropping the anti-gay
Ms. Shocked.”
Until Sunday night, everybody pegged “the anti-gay Ms. Shocked”
as a lesbian superhero. Rachel Maddow certainly did when she stole
Shocked’s haircut. The singer’s 1989 “On the Greener Side” video, a
feminist reinterpretation of the iconic “Addicted to Love” video
that replaced Robert Palmer’s female eye-candy with male models
imitating their blank mannequin stares, brought a politicized edge
to a relatively apolitical MTV in its 1980s heyday. So when police
arrested Shocked two years ago at the Occupy Los Angeles protest,
the news shocked nobody.
Despite the legitimate greatness of her 1988 near-hit
“Anchorage,” Shocked’s left-wing political sensibilities far more
than her artistic talents made her career. Her debut album, for
example, featured a picture of her arrest at a protest outside
1984’s Democratic National Convention as cover art. So it makes
sense that an audience built on ideological solidarity disappears
because Shocked has finally done something to earn her name.
Popular music fans are a forgiving bunch. If they can place
Chris Brown at the top of Billboard’s album charts after he beat up
his girlfriend, put Steven Tyler on American Idol’s seat
of judgment after he once secured custody rights to an underage
girlfriend, or beatify Michael Jackson after his disturbing
relationships with boys, then maybe a penitent Shocked will
eventually win absolution, too. Alas, some transgressions, like
embracing a political position that the voters of most states have
endorsed, don’t merit clemency.
Before the San Francisco club pulled the plug on Shocked’s
concert Sunday night, the singer characterized her beliefs as
“nothing worth getting a froth over.” She apparently didn’t know
her audience. “This is not a tribunal,” Shocked naively explained.
“This is one woman’s opinion.”
Whoever said all publicity is good publicity should have never
said it to Michelle Shocked. The nerve of some people to think that
they can continue to make a living after embracing a ballot
question endorsed (twice!) by a majority of California voters — in
the state of California no less. Rock ’n’ roll, a musical form
synonymous with rebellion, ends as conformity.
John Lennon observed that the Beatles bested Christ in the
popularity department. Michelle Shocked opined that marriage should
remain the domain of one man and one woman.
Heresies tell us so much about a society.
Photo: Creative Commons
