This may be more appropriate for Great Debates, but I’ll start it out in here. Do you think that her Vaticanstunt this weekend was utterly tacky and classless (ala Sinead and Michael Moore) or something that needed to be said?
There was a (surprisingly) good article in Rolling Stone a couple months back - focusing on how absolutely she lost it, after being one of the most promising acts in the genre. I mean, after Miseductation grabbed the grammy, she seemed such a self-aware, together, and politically-savvy chick. Apparently fame wore her down immensly, lots of “friends” proved to be no support, and if this weren’t enough, she started hanging around some kind of shady spiritual guru. eaw. Consequently, I think she lost sense of most reality. She recorded an “Unplugged” that would have been binned by anyone with ears, if she were anyone else.
It’s a crying shame, but it happens - talents wasted.
Come ooon, geez louize. AS IF acting funny and talking out of your ass should be reserved exclusively for lesbians! I’m pretty much hetero and I should like to act inappropriately and talk nonsense whenever the hell I please.
[and what is it with automatically dubbing an unfortunately outspoken broad a lesbian? Is it a defence mechanism of sorts? It’s so unbelievably common]
SmackFu My hair was that short when I got married. It was even shorter when I met my husband. Length or style of hair has no bearing on a woman’s sexuality.
I don’t mean to sound like being thought a lesbian an insult, being judged by one’s hairstyle is.
Why does everyone always come down on people who take the chance to address a huge audience, or in this case, the exact appropriate crowd with lots of influence on the issue at hand? When you believe that something is ruining the lives of thousands of people, or steering the world toward the brink of destruction, why hold your tongue out of some misplaced sense of decorum? You get your chance to address an audience, maybe the biggest audience you’ll ever have the attention of, and you go for it.
That’s not tacky, it’s making the most of an opportunity you might never get again, even if you burn all your bridges as you do it. Sinead, Mr. Moore, and Ms. Hill obviously all felt strongly enough about their chosen issues to speak about them even though they knew there might be backlash. If it’s even slightly likely that they change a few minds or push a few revelations on the issue, I’m sure they’re satisfied with the result.
It was not an appropriate crowd. The crowd did not come that day to hear Lauryn Hill rant about the Church and sing a protest song. They came to hear a Christmas concert. If she’d done it at a protest rally across the street, it wouldn’t be tacky. Instead, she hijacked a totally unrelated event.
It’s like the ACT-UP demonstrations at St. Patrick’s in the 80s. I thought that was tacky, too. If you want to draw people to your point of view, you don’t hijack their sacred institutions and you don’t use an invitation to sing as an opportunity to screed. These are the signs of incredible ego, self-centered thinking, and narcissistic tendencies. “Look at me! Look at me! Look how evolved I am!”
I understand your point, but otoh where better to address a problem with the Catholic church than in an audience with some of the most powerful men in the Church?
I definitely think it was ill advised from several perspectives, but at the same time I have no sympathy for the Cardinals themselves. They don’t deserve to be comfortable and sheltered from the scandals they helped create (I’m referring to the cover-ups, not the abuse of children) even for a minute.