Iraq is Whack
It's getting harder and harder to get attention these days. You can get naked or shoot someone (the old-fashioned ways); publish something "true" and later reveal it was all a hoax; make a sex tape. Or, you can throw a benefit concert with a laundry list of big-name performers and mediagenic celebrities.
To kick off the national Bring 'em Home Now lecture tour, organizers decided to keep Cindy Sheehan clothed and smut-free (hmm: she somehow managed to grab the spotlight without doing any of the things listed above). So that just leaves a good ole' fashioned benefit concert.
When the lineup arrived on my desk, I felt strangely energized since it fulfills a few freaky fantasies of mine I didn't know I harbored: What scene might Michael Stipe and Peaches enact on the same stage? Margaret Cho, Casey Spooner and Chuck D sounds like one kinky threesome. At the same time, it's the most queer-centric rally ever organized for something that doesn't include a Pride festival or a gay-rights cause.
While Kerry got Springsteen to shill for him, "Bring 'em Home Now" has Bright Eyes. Now that's tough. Steve Earle must have been added to help boost the butch factor at least a smidge. In some way it does seem almost retro enough to work: the likelihood of Jane Fonda alongside Sandra Bernhard. Gore Vidal (Old Left tony intellectual) alongside Tony Kushner (New Left tony intellectual). Devendra Banhart and Rufus Wainwright reprising their trademark whimsical, hippierific numbers. (I won't mention how many of these guys are actually Canadian.)
The event will certainly attract attention-including the likely hoards of conservative pundits who will use it as another example of the Hollywood (Alec Baldwin)-Manhattan (Susan Sarandon) Evil Liberal Axis. I can just about hear Limbaugh/Coulter/O'Reilly now: "Look at what the pansies and cowards are up to now. In New York City!"
Not sure if this concert will help bring the soldiers home from the hellhole that we've turned Iraq into. But whatever your politics, it promises to be one hell of a good show.