8 of the 11 venues remaining on Michelle Shocked tour cancel over anti-gay rant

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

As of Monday evening, eight of the 11 venues remaining on Shocked’s U.S. tour have cancelled her upcoming performances:

HopMonk’s Tavern in Novato, Calif., SPACE in Evanston, Ill., eTown in Boulder, Colo., the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Ore., Meander’s Kitchen in Seattle, Cozmic in Eugene, Ore., the Palms Playhouse in Winter, Calif., and Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz, Calif., have all announced or tweeted cancellations.

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/03/singer-michelle-shocked-declares-god-hates-fags-during-san-francisco-show/

Any bets on how long til she gets an invite to be a Hannity celebrity bigot alongside Mark Fuhrman and Victoria Jackson?

[magellan]

1. I had no idea who she was until yesterday

But it takes some impressive stupidity to say what she did, where she said it. It's like she set out to purposely implode her career.

I'm very glad to see her hatred being met with such resistance. That's the best way to deal with it: reject it.

[Ex Lurker]

4. Sounds like more of a psychotic episode of some sort to me

I'm no expert on Michelle Shocked. I don't think I could identify one of her songs if you played it for me. However, someone I know pretty well has worked with her professionally and has had nothing but good things to say about her.. This person has a gay family member and is very sensitive to GLBT issues. There's no way she'd associate with Shocked if she knew this. Either Ms Shocked has kept this attitude VERY well hidden, or what I think more likely, something is going on mentally.

[magellan]

6. Others who knew her are expressing shock too

Some knew her personally, others from a distance. She was even involved in OWS not too long ago. It seems this change in her has coincided with being Born Again.

Self-loathing can do this to a person.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

7. I saw her perform right after an Amy Goodman antiwar speech in DC in 2003

It was the launch of Code Pink. Alice Walker was also on the bill.

So, yeah, she's done a 180 and gone nuts.

[magellan]

8. Just found this 2003 article about her

Can't Take Her Joy

MICHELLE SHOCKED WAS raised in "an extremely large, poor, strict fundamentalist Mormon household," which she left at 16. She worked herself through college, earning a degree in oral interpretation of literature from the University of Texas. Shocked then spent several years in the early '80s hitching from city to city, staying in squats, playing mandolin and fiddle in street bands. She was an activist, paying particular attention to community organizing on the issue of water privatization.

Around this time, her mother had Shocked involuntarily committed to a mental institution. The insurance ran out a month later, and Shocked was suddenly out on the street, still under the influence of "mental straitjacket" drugs—as Shocked explained, "You can think clearly but you can't connect the thoughts with actions." She was raped. "I literally watched myself being raped by this man, and I didn't understand at the time that it was my inability because of the drugs [that kept me from fighting back]. I felt guilty for years and years afterward that I watched it happen. That was really painful. That makes you angry."

...

When she's home, Shocked follows a rigid diet. While she eats, she reads scripture. "I've read Matthew, Mark, and am just starting Luke, all in about one month," she said. "I'll read through the whole Bible this year."

The more I read about her, the more I think the psychological damage from her youth - religion, emotional and physical trauma - has really screwed up her head. Trying to find peace of mind by throwing oneself into religion is all too common. Some make it out the other side and get real help...others don't. Sounds to me like she's buried herself.

[Hissyspit]

13. "Anchorage" was a very nice song. It went to #16 on the Modern Rock chart in 1988.

And the debut album was good and had a great cover of a real news photo of her being choke-holded by a cop at a protest.

Obviously she is not doing well now for some reasons. Just sad.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. I hadn't heard her name in a good 20+ years.

[olddots]

2. i feel sorry for her band,crew and everyone involved with her

There is something about being the front person in a band that makes people go crazy .

[Tunkamerica]

10. Good point, but they had to have an idea by now.

She seems unhinged and contradictory. Anyone who had a problem with it in her "crew" (I bet she has very little of her own crew just from my experience with solo acts... maybe a light person, maybe a sound person, maybe a guitar tech but maybe none of those) has probably long since departed.

[sigmasix]

3. just got her debute album

The reviews say the album is phenomenal- I havent had the time to listen to it yet. What'd she say?

[ismnotwasm]

5. Wow, I just looked at her wiki thread

She's been working up to this

Shocked put forward an ambiguous sexuality from the beginning of her career. Her music appealed to many people including lesbians. In 1989 she joked to a US broadcast television audience that the New Music Album of the Year award she won, beating out Tracy Chapman, Phranc, and the Indigo Girls, should have been called "Best Lesbian Vocalist".After an Earth Day performance in Chicago in April 1990, she gave an interview to Christie L. Nordhielm of Outlines, a Chicago newspaper for the gay community. Accompanied by journalist Bart Bull, she told Nordhielm she felt boxed in by listener expectations that she was either straight or gay; she said, "I would like a much broader definition for myself." She explained her wish to be politically and sexually subversive by saying, "I resent like hell that I was maybe 18 years old before I even heard the 'L' word. I mean, that's understood, growing up sheltered in a Mormon environment. But it would have made all the difference for me had I grown up knowing that the reason I didn't fit in, was because they hadn't told me there were more categories to fit into."[3] She said she did not condone the outing activities engaged in by members of ACT UP.Since then, Shocked has been listed as lesbian or bisexual.
In the mid-'90s, Shocked joined the choir of West Angeles Church of God in Christ. After attending for a number of years, she was born again. Since her religious revelation, Shocked has made a number of statements against homosexuality, linking this stance to her religious beliefs. In a 2008 interview with the Dallas Voice, a gay newspaper, she said that she would be "honored" to be called an "honorary lesbian" but added:
“There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian. So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling. According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more or less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.
Later statements in live performance have not included references to her own "fornication". While performing at the Wild Goose Festival in June of 2011, a Christian event at which the inclusion of gay Christians was debated, Shocked responded to an audience member's question about homosexuality by saying “Who drafted me as a gay icon? You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks.”
On March 17, 2013, Shocked spoke out against gays during a concert at Yoshi's nightclub in San Francisco, which led to the audience leaving in protest and club management ending the show. Shocked was reported to have told the audience, "You are going to leave here and tell people 'Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots." At least two venues cancelled scheduled performances in response to Shocked's remarks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Shocked

As far as canceling her concerts? Good.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

17. One thing you can't hide

is when you're crippled inside.

[VOX]

11. Add McCabe's in Santa Monica to the cancelled-event list...

http://www.mccabes.com/condata.html

They did the absolute right thing.

[Gabby Hayes]

12. When I grew up I became a (superstitious) old lady

Good grief, Michelle, you couldn't just shut up and sing.

[kag]

14. I was glad to see that eTown in Boulder was one of the first to cancel.

It certainly looks like she has had some kind of breakdown.

It is so hard to watch some of these churches/temples/mosques take people who are otherwise kind, open-minded, thinking, feeling humans, and turn them into hateful hypocrites.

I predict she will regret this tirade--and I mean really, seriously regret it. She sounds like someone whose sexuality got screwed up at a very early age. Between the lack of real information as a child, to being raped by a man, to being cast publicly as a lesbian icon, to finally being "born again" into bigotry and self-loathing...it's really no wonder she's pretty screwed up. I hope she gets some real help.

[Mutiny In Heaven]

15. Something important about her that should be pointed out

She's been treated for paranoid schizophrenia in the past and is generally a bit of a brittle cookie. Unfortunately, people with a tenuous grip on sanity are often seen as ripe for picking by the more extreme, agenda-driven religious-types. Unfortunately, more people would rather see video games regulated than churches.

[southernyankeebelle]

16. Sometimes people say things they really don't mean. Maybe she got up on the wrong side of the

bed that morning and wasn't going to take anyone crap and she snapped. I wouldn't be surprised if she wished she hadn't said it. I hope she'll put her big girl pants on and do the right thing. I never heard of her. When I heard Michelle Shocked I thought they were talking about Mrs Obama shocked someone on the right. That's how much I know about this girl.

[LWolf]

18. Well, I'm shocked and awed

at how she's allowed fundamentalist christian doctrine to dictate her world view.

[Helen Reddy]

19. Thank goodness god

and Michelle hate fags.

***SARCASM

She would enjoy my company, since I'm a lesbian, right?