Silencing the Voice of an Angel

- by Richard Moreno

Linda Ronstadt, the 58-year-old 10-time Grammy Award winner, while on stage dedicated the classic rock ballad "Desperado!" to an award winning documentary filmmaker during her sold out concert at the Aladdin Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. Innocuous enough, so one would in normal times think. However, in response, an Aladdin crack security team swept Ms Ronstand off the premises and, moreover, barred her from her suite as if she were some common vagrant begging for alms at some Republican cocktail party.

What is so reprehensible regarding her otherwise harmless introduction to a song this Las Vegas night that elicited such an ironhanded response was the fact that the documentary award winning filmmaker whom she praised happened to be non other than Michael Moore, nowadays public enemy number one.

Ever since the opening of "Fahrenheit 9/11", which among other things questions the pretexts given for the US's invasion and occupation of Iraq and the administration's ties to big oil in general, Moore has incurred the wrath of the gatekeepers of such media conglomerates as FOX News, concretely expressed in the prejudiced commentaries of the ghoulish Sean Hannity and the self-styled "no-spin" Bill O'Reilly.

The Tuscon-born Ronstadt has infused her artistic talents with political content at a time when the powers-that-be want nothing more than to intimidate opposition to their current agenda of endless war and domestic repression in an attempt to silence those who speak out against the injustices being committed in our names. Bill Timmins, the president of the Alaaddin Casino and Hotel, and his actions should be seen as part and parcel of an entire culture of fear that seeks to impose an agenda, which can and must be questioned and challenged. In this context, Linda Ronstadt has fulfilled her societal obligations as an artist at a time when our country cries out for it the most.

Linda Ronstadt has shed some light in an artistic world direly in need of it. And her brilliance is accentuated in these dark times of preemptive wars and Patriot Acts much as the shade of a Caravaggio painting contrasts the subject matter of a baroque masterpiece.

Readers can check out Michael Moore's open letter to the Las Vegas casino owner who booted Linda Rondstadt of the stage here: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=93

Richard Moreno is a Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) student and activist with the Global Resistance Network in Los Angeles. He can be reached at polyapplications@aol.com.