Based on her long history of being quite gay gay friendly and her fairly deliberate ambisexual persona, if she actually said what she’s quoted as saying re “hates fags” etc chances are pretty good she’s falling down the rabbit hole of a profound mental collapse.
Can you hate someone who’s going nuts?
As I recall the SF Chronicle’s original reporting, the sequence at Yosh’s was pretty much organic - about 2/3 of the crowd headed for the door, the people working the lights and audio functioned independently to end the show; it was not a matter of the the club reluctantly cancelled after letting her continue. By the time she got the the word “fag”, it was over.
My reading is:
Specific reference to Prop 8 (a Catholic-backed state prop banning gay marriage, now in front of the SCOTUS)
A line about "Priests being forced to marry (“them”) at gunpoint
These are not lines a casual “Ummm, how do I stir up the press” thoughts of a fading star would produce - only those who care deeply refer to “Prop 8”; run-of-the-mill bigots use “gay marriage” or “homosexual marriage”.
She was stating a real belief; nothing phony in that rant
I, for one, appreciate the enlightenment!
Almost certainly. She was a skate punk before she was a folky.
I’m not willing to dismiss this as craziness. She has an extreme and offensive world view, but that doesn’t mean she’s nuts. Barring evidence of some sort of mental breakdown, I think we should take her words as an accurate representation of a sincerely-held position.
It was also used by the Thatcher administration in Great Britain starting around 1979 in reference to treatment for youth offenders. That may have been the starting point for the use by Punk bands.
FWIW, another article. Sad.
What the ripsnortin’ bloody hell?!
Is this a whoosh? A troll move? It does not compute. Michelle joined with Code Pink for a demonstration on International Women’s Day at the White House, 9 years ago. Michelle bent over and wrote the word O-I-L in the air with her ass, aimed at the White House, to protest the war. A large proportion of Code Pink ladies is (are?) queer, you know.
More info:
It sounds like she wanted to make some sort of statement along the lines “Even though some Christians are intolerant, we should remember that they’re people too and we should try to understand how their fear makes them act like that.” Only she did it badly and incoherently and managed to convince everyone that she supported anti-gay intolerance.
Of course, at this point what she actually believes is moot. It’s gone viral and there are no do-overs on the internet.
An earlier use of the phrase in rock ‘n’ roll was on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon where it crops up in the middle of “Us and Them.” (Spoken by roadie Roger the Hat.)
Indigo Girls have been overtly Christian all along, although they used to be subtle about working in Christian references. In recent years, Amy Ray has gotten more outspokenly evangelistic in her songs. You can hear her praise the Son of God etc. to the tune of some bluegrass pickin just like some right-wing country evangelical singer. But she has remained as politically progressive as ever, and as outspoken for gay liberation as ever. When she sang about the gay kids in Salt Lake City and how they fight to be set free, she addressed a plea to the Mormons for acceptance of LGBT people, with the lyrics “I ain’t here to fuck the family!” and concluding with “Way down in the Deep South / I got the Bible Belt blues / I want to shake these chains off / What have I got to lose?” That was one of her increasingly outspoken protest songs against homophobia. Or how about “The cowboys made you uneasy / You’re a God-fearing lesbian.” Amy and Emily to this day are setting an example of unspoilt leftist Christianity. Gay leftist Christianity.
But holy what the fuck, Batman! Michelle Cracked!
Wow. THAT should be an album title.
To me, this is almost as bizarre as Bette Midler or Liza Minelli or Margaret Cho delivering an anti-gay rant. Or Amy Grant throwing copies of ***The God Delusion ***into the crowd.
Does the woman just have no clue who her audience is?
Just saw an article on this. It’s a bit difficult to credit: She says “I live in fear…” and “Michelle Shocked says…” and now she’s trying to say that she was trying to make some sort of ironic statement? I am not convinced. Though to be fair, it’s awfully hard to gracefuly pull your foot out of your mouth when it’s so deep it’s sticking out the other end of your digestive tract…
As has already been pointed out in this thread (post #37), the phrase “short, sharp, shock” actually goes back at least to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado. In the 1970s-80s it was a common, well-known catchphrase in right wing British political discourse, signifying the idea that young offenders could most effectively be punished, and deterred from future criminal activity, by custodial sentences that were relatively brief, but applied particularly harsh, quasi-military conditions (or possibly even beatings). It was often heard on the news. No doubt the punk bands picked it up from from there. I do not think we can reliably guess where Ms Shocked got it from.
As for the incident, going by what else has been said in this thread (she was no more than a vaguely remembered name to me before), it sounds as though she had a psychotic breakdown on stage. Get her on appropriate schizophrenia meds and it is quite possible that she might once again become as gay-friendly as she apparently used to be.
I just listened to an upload of the audio of the show. She said “…from their vantage point – actually, I shouldn’t say ‘their,’ because it’s mine, too – we are standing at the end of Time…” as a preface to her remarks.
From that article, it seems that at least one of the “quotes” in the OP was inaccurate. Shocked didn’t say “God hates fags and you can tweet that I said so”; she said “You can all go on Twitter and say that Michelle Shocked said that God hates fags.”
The former is pretty unambiguous. The latter, I can see the possibility that it could have been a very badly worded attempt to heckle the hecklers… i.e., “OK, now you all apparently have decided that I’m some kind of Fred Phelps who thinks God hates fags, but that’s not what I’m saying. But go ahead, do it, you’ve obviously stopped listening to me so I’m not going to be able to correct your misperception.”
I’m not saying that’s necessarily what she was thinking. But after reading that article, I can see the possibility of something somewhat different than the scenario that was originally presented.
That’s the way I’m leaning, and her follow-ups seem to support it. However, the remarks at the bottom of the column indicate that very few people believe her.
That second statement is, minimally, extremely confusing.
[QUOTE=Michelle Shocked]
I may disagree with someone’s most fervently held belief, but I will not hate them. And in this controversy, that means speaking for Christians with opinions I in no way share about homosexuality. Will I endorse them? Never. Will I disavow them? Never.
[/QUOTE]
So she doesn’t agree (she says) with fundamentalist opposition to gay marriage (I guess). She neither endorses nor disavows those views, but she (may) disagree with them. At the same time, she is going to “speak for” those fundamentalist people.
At the very best interpretation I can come up with, “speak for” would mean that she is going to say what they would say, but would never get the chance to say in such a venue as a San Francisco music club. (I wonder if that means that she would take the same kind of opportunity to espouse gay rights in, say, Iowa?)
This does not seem like neutrality on the subject to me. It does not seem like a desire to be objective. It does not seem like a viable method of expressing her belief in a “God who loves everyone.”
I am concluding that she is sincere but badly deluded in her understanding of what the doctrines she is espousing really mean. If she is not going to disavow those who say that “God hates fags” then she either agrees with them, or she does not understand what “disavow” means.
So if she had been more clear in her statements in the club, she might have said this: “You know, there are fundamentalist Christians out there who believe that repeal of Prop 8 means that we are in the End Times. I don’t agree with them, but I thought you should know.”
This is something she thinks is necessary to say in San Francisco? What distorted world view might think that we don’t already know?
Roddy