Letters to the Editor
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re: Al's big day
Did the author see the same show that I saw?
An amazing clusterf*ck despite good intentions. The Police/Kanye 'grand finale' was embarassingly awful with John Mayer staying gracefully out of the way.
When historic do-gooders stay away (McCartney, Springsteen, REM, Neil Young) you know something is just wrong. Good for them!
The cause is too important to be trivialized by this ego-centic debacle. Pathetic.
And will some get rid of the hopeless Carson Daley, please?
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No, one cannot always walk or bike to the store
Sorry, wanted to respond to another point I had previously missed.
Unfortunately, our cities and suburbs were largely planned on the presumption that its residents would rely on private automobiles (and there's a whole nefarious history behind the lack of street cars in cities like LA; the car manufacturers bought them up and paved over the tracks). So, while it's true that *I* can walk or bike to the store to get a CD or video from my house in Washington, DC, not to mention groceries, there are countless Americans who cannot get much of anything without hopping in a car. Not to mention disabled and elderly individuals, whom the coming oil/fuel crisis is going to hit particularly hard, I would imagine. For those people, the Internet is a lifeline.
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Message to baby-boomers: it isn't all about you
I'm so sick of ex-hippie baby boomers taking credit for stuff they had nothing to do with. The show on Saturday was entertaining and raised awareness. 2 billion people watched or participated in it, from all over the planet. The only person I would have categorized as a hippie was Etheridge.
I don't give a shit about hippies or the 60's. Great music, but considering I'm 40 years old, and I was only 2 and a half years old on New Year's Eve. 1970, I'd just like to say for the record that you can take your giant egos and shove em. Stop reminding me that you were so great. You couldn't stop Nixon from getting elected either, and the Vietnam war did not end solely because of you.
Dissent, peaceful assembly, non-violent resistance began a long long time before hippies. Gandhi assisted in freeing India from England using it. The power of ideas, and communication to effect change is not a hippie concept. Perhaps if hippies cared more about change, and less about all the "summer-of-love" excuse to get high bullshit, America would have come to some sort of maturity about the mistakes of Vietnam, so that we wouldn't make the same mistake 30 odd years later.
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Kanye West, bigger disaster than global warming
Kanye West's performance was a bigger disaster than climate change. "Throw your hands up in the air and wave them like you just don't care"? Aside from being a comically worn out cliche of a refrain, that is hardly the message they were trying to send with this event.
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Who kidnapped Cintra?
Queen Cynicism on about 'saving the world'? Keen. But weird. And as much as I love the whole thing, the greatest good we all can do is booting the GOP out of DC for tne next 20 years. It's worth a million fluorescent bulbs.
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Um ... no
Outside the hotel in which I was watching the concert on TV, I saw a shuttle-bus driver, having trouble getting out of a roundabout, leave his van running to go argue with another driver. His headlights were on; exhaust was pumping into the heat.
The van driver would not have done that if he had seen that concert.
This reads like a politics-tinged concert review written by an overzealous college-age neohippie -- possibly one who has friends who say things like, "Omagawd, Madonna? Changed my life? And that group ... um ... Gene-something? With the old bald dude? Has totally got me thinking about walking to Starbucks next time to make the world a better place?"
In the real world, anyone who drives a Hummer probably wouldn't have tuned in to see the concerts. And somehow I doubt a Bon Jovi reunion is of the order of miracles needed to make stodgy nonbelievers suddenly go all squishy and start wondering how they can stop the climate change they didn't believe existed 5 minutes ago.
I'll concede that Live Earth might have started people talking about the issue, but it didn't start a revolution.
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BTW, 'Contemptuous Con":
Someone better tell the 99.99 percent of the ten million scientists around the world that they are "confused by this global warming crap."
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Can' be wrong??
"Two billion fans, 130 countries, seven continents and Jon Bon Jovi can't be wrong"?
You can't be serious about that statement. Only fools equate opinion with fact.
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From the AP:
"Rocker Dave Matthews said he tries to go green by driving a hybrid vehicle that uses less gasoline than other vehicles and uses cloth diapers for his new baby.
But Matthews admitted he wasn't perfect.
'I'm flawed. Cows fart and so do I,' he said, referring to methane gas released by cows that also contributes to global warming."
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mjw2025:
"Can' be wrong??
"Two billion fans, 130 countries, seven continents and Jon Bon Jovi can't be wrong"?
You can't be serious about that statement. Only fools equate opinion with fact."
I must ask: are you often exposed to "serious" statements that include the phrase "Bon Jovi can't be wrong"?
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The inconveninet truth about such event
Yes, these concerts will help us solve Global Warming and reduce carbon gas emissions the way similar events solved poverty and hunger in Africa in the past. Every little bit doesn't really help. You need to turn that AC off, get on the bus instead of your car or plane-or better walk if you can. You need better isolated homes, which means the whole construction sector in North America needs an overhaul and we need to start building houses like the rest of the world -not out of cardboard- and stop relying so much on air conditioning. Nobody needs 5 TVs in one household. Why would a family of four need a house with 6 bedrooms and bathrooms? You get the idea. These things will not happen, unless the government intervenes. The government needs to put high taxes on oil and then we will have to change the way we live. The government needs to pass stricter environmental regulations on manufacturing industries. The government needs to stop subsidizing environmentally disastrous agricultural practices. Every little voluntary bit adds up to nothing, if we do not accept that, we need far more drastic changes than using recycled paper. Cosmetic changes only create the illusion that we are doing something. That's not helping us. And yes, Madonna is a global warming disaster. So is Hollywood. Shouldn't we question their hypocrisy? How is it different from those gay preachers who preach gay hate? This is not about light bulbs. I wish it were because then my light bulbs would make me feel so much better about my flight miles, my car mileage, my AC and all else. But we do not want public transportation, we will not live in smaller houses and we will not consume less. Global warming or not, the resources of this planet are finite, but we'll never think about this as long as we can afford our current life-style. So, the government should make it less affordable, but it won't happen. Enjoy your feel-good concerts and Inconvenient Truth DVD.