Thursday, March 21, 2013

Michelle Shocked: Audio of Rant; Lying in Statement

I'm listening to the audio of Michelle Shocked's Yoshi's rant right now. There is no other way to say this: She lied in her statement. I'll have my own transcript soon.
 


Update: This is what MS said, after a leadup about Georgia O'Keefe:
So it's not too late, you can jump into this Jesus game any time you want. But um...

I was in a prayer meeting yesterday, and you've gotta appreciate how scared, how scared folks on that side of the equation are. I mean, I mean, from their vantage point - and I really shouldn't say "their," cuz it's mine too, um, we are at nearly at the end of time. And, from our vantage point, uh, w're gonna be, uh, I think maybe Chinese water torture is gonna be the means, the method, once Prop 8 gets instated, and once, um, preachers are held at gunpoint, and forced to marry the homosexuals, I'm pretty sure that that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back.

['what?' from the crowd, and one 'hallelujah']
[giggles] You said you wanted reality. [audience laughs nervously, then louder, claps a bit]
If someone would be so gracious as to please tweet out, 'Michelle Shocked just said from stage "God hates faggots".' Would you do it now?
That's what she said. To a quiet, respectful, adoring - until that point - audience. There was no provocation. There was no "This is what some people in my congregation believe."

Wow. Michelle Shocked's statement cannot be described as anything else but a lie. You could almost - almost - giver her the "That's what you'll say on Twitter" thing about the "Gods hate faggots" part - but only if there was some context that made that make sense. There just isn't. She clearly thought this through beforehand. (The "Chinese water torture" appears to be about how she is slowly building up to the ugly words she knows she's about to say. Just my impression.) And the part about Prop 8, which she says in her statement "was neither literal nor ironic: it was a description of how some folks - not me - feel about gay marriage," is plainly not true, according to her own words at Yoshi's. (Insert: The fact that Prop 8 makes gay marriage illegal makes that statement all the more confusing. I think she just got it mixed up.) Which just makes the whole thing, and especially with the "God hates faggots" cherry on top, simply purposely provocative, and in a purely bigoted and very ugly way.

Michelle Shocked owns all of this.

And it gets very ugly - and weird - after the part I've transcribed. Gawker has more on that. Even more from John Becker.

• From Rhondda, who tipped me about the audio, a link to a very weird 2011 interview with MS.

• And for those interested:

Update, Friday, AU: Well, that was a disaster. The Nicole Sandler Interview. The WaPo even wrote about it.

Shocked did show up for an interview with a friend at SPIN. The explanation is Twitter Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Or something.

12 comments:

  1. She was clearly on a mission to preach against teh gay and save souls. I have listened several times and I do believe the "God hates faggots" line was sarcastic and taunting . . . but not necessarily far from her beliefs.

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    1. Sarcastic and taunting is the perfect way to desribe that.

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  2. In her written statement to the press, apology letter, she said: "The show was all music, and the audience tweets said they enjoyed it. The commentary came about ten minutes later, in the encore."

    Wow, that's about 3 lies per sentence, judging from the audio. I don't think anyone should take any of her statements seriously.

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    1. I don't think she's lying. She really believes what she says. She is unwell. Unfortunately, she also thinks she's found the cure.

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  3. MS dodged her radio interview today but gave a revealing FaceTime interview to a friend:

    http://www.spin.com/articles/michelle-shocked-gay-rant-apology-interview

    I can stand by my opinion that she was on a mission, but it is now abundantly clear that she's suffering messianic delusions and paranoia.

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  4. Ms. Shocked is quite vigorous with Internet take-down notices, so backups should be made of that Soundcloud audio from Yoshi's. Don't expect Soundcloud to mount a vigorous fair-use/news value defense.

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    1. I thought of that! But I dont have the tech to make a copy myself. (Pretty sure it's covered, though.)

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    2. Do a good seach "soundcloud downloader" and just download the mp3 yourself.

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    3. I have a copy and I'm sure many others do, too. Under U.S. copyright law, the only parts she can validly protest are her songs. At most, she is a joint author of the rest of the recording, unless she can prove she was reading from a script prepared beforehand.

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    4. Note that in her twitter dialog with Nicole Sandler, Ms. Shocked refers to this recording from Yoshi's as "a bootleg", criticizing Nicole for playing it on the show.

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    5. That appears to be a thing of hers, going back to the 1980s. The guy who recorded her breakthrough "Texas Campfire Tapes" commened in the original post.

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    6. Well, it IS a bootleg if it was made by a patron. Every club in the world has a "no recording" rule. But it sounds like it was made right off the sound console to me. I bet Yoshi's released it after MS' ridiculous explanation, just to show her up.

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