Agree, but ... it's Las Vegas, how did she expect them to react?
Was kind of chuckling thinking of Ronstadt imploring Michael Moore to "come down from [his] fences before it's too late", like before the fence fell over. But she was probably directing that line at someone like Bush; if so, it would have been the gentlest and most touching political rebuke ever delivered. Of course, all that would undoubtedly have been lost on the drunk, petty-bourgeois louts who ran her out of the casino.
Politics is just war by other means, baby. The winner-take-all system in the US has helped to create profoundly hardball politics -- it's only the middle of the last century which saw a reduction in that vitriol, probably because of the lingering effects of the New Deal, World War II's effects on the rest of the world, and external pressures in the form of the cold war. Note that if you were a black person or a woman in those decades, your view of the nature of the politics were probably pretty different.
More specifically in this case, the hard right has created a cult of personality around their leaders, because that's what you do in a militarist, hierarchical society, and no matter what the few real libertarians (not the corporate apologists) say, the Republican party as currently constituted is a top-down, barracks-bully, worship-the-leader organization.
By contrast, the Democrats, more enamored of process than outcome, are less likely to mistake the man for the office. That has its good and bad points.
Yeah, and what did she expect from a bunch of people who go to Vegas and spend their hard-won money at a Linda Ronstadt concert.
As a quick follow-up, is one NEVER supposed to criticize the sitting president? What about the sitting vice president if he runs? What about the governor? Lieutenant governor? Mayor? Dogcatcher?
Not sure what Bob's getting at, but I was just saying that the crowd's reaction could be foreseen, not that it could be justified. Casinos are generally not hotbeds of progressivism and free thought.
I was agreeing with you, SV. Sometimes I sound more ironic than I intend.
To place a come bet when you play craps online, put your chips in the box labeled Come play 21 right back to me I never saw Nirvana play but I remember exactly where.