To anyone who has known me for a while, it comes as no surprise that I am a very avid Barbra Streisand fan. I had been a little disappointed because what attracted me most to her (besides what I consider to be one of the greatest voices of our times) was the courage she has always shown, be it in the career moves she has made or in the honesty of her opinions and how passionately she defends them, and I had been feeling that she had only be making safe choices recently, with her music and her movies.
It is also known to anyone who has followed her career that she is an outspoken liberal who has started using he influence early on and even participated in her first political fund-raiser, for George McGovern (an act that would place her on Richard Nixon's enemies list), and continued to support liberal causes and singing at benefits, like she did for Clinton.
And yet, during her recent tour, in every city she's been in, there has been some kind of "audience outburst" whenever she does a skit in which she jokes with a Bush impersonator. It happened in Philadelphia, here in NY (though we are mostly liberals) and now in Florida, where someone actually threw a drink at her during the show.Why? How? And why does it seem so much like a set up?
Let's see the facts:
~ Barbra Streisand comes back to the stage to get funds for the Streisand Foundation (
http://www.barbrastreisand.com/foundationguidelines.html). Her organization which has made grants totaling nearly 15 million dollars to national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues and nuclear disarmament.
~ She is one of the most known democratic and liberal celebrities in this country (Bill and Hillary Clinton were sitting by me at Madison Square Garden) who regularly posts political statements on her blog (
http://www.barbrastreisand.com/statements.html).
~ The ticket prices varied from a few hundred to $5000 dollars, being that those sitting on the cheaper seats were too far to be able to reach her with anything, so the assumption is that the turmoil was caused by someone from the $5000 section, which was most of the lower levels of the stadiums.
~ Anyone willing to pay $5000 to see someone would have to be a very big fan.
And the question is, what kind of fan who would be willing to pay $5000 for a ticket to see an artist would be ignorant enough to offend her and throw things at her during the show?What kind of person would do that to an artist under any circumstances? And what are the chances of that randomly happening in SEVERAL CITIES?
If that really were a random event, then, by gosh, this country is in worse shape than we think. If it were, as many suggest, someone planted in the shows to discredit her (they managed to make her curse here in NYC and that was all over the news), then this country is STILL in worse shape than we think.
Below is a reminder of some basic principles we seem to be forgetting:
FREEDOM OF SPEECH:
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, provides, in Article 19, that:
Everyone has the right to opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
A man with a megaphone (who happened to be a retired veteran who was evicted), asking people to vote because "rent is too damn high". Also publicizing his personal party and website: http://rentistoodamnhigh.org/.
