http://youtu.be/YDnCXwOsQnU
Almost two weeks after punk folk female icon Michelle Shocked made comments deemed highly offensive to a crowd at a San Francisco concert about same-sex marriage, the singer appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan to offer an equally offensive apology.
You will recall, and as it was reported here, Ms. Shocked was appearing at Yoshi in San Francisco when, towards the end of her concert, she declared, “When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back.” Compounding the problem, Ms. Shocked added:”You are going to leave here and tell people, ‘Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots.’”
As a result a number of venues cancelled her shows.
But, according to Eonline.com, the singer appeared on Piers Morgan and when she was asked to addressed the controversy, instead decided to stick her moral guns:
“I admit I made a mistake, Piers. If I had the chance to go back and do it again, I don’t think I would’ve taken the audience up on their choice. I had presented an entire performance and I framed it as truth and then I came back out for an encore and they requested reality, and what has consequently taken place ever since then is my manifestation of how little I think of reality. I know that it’s a stock and trade for a lot of the media to just present things like that’s how it really is, but I don’t think the audience was ready for the consequences of that and I surely have not been happy with it.”
Comedian Margaret Cho penned an editorial for the Huffington Post which read, in part, “When someone like Michelle Shocked, formerly a beloved, alt queer muse and maker of the ’90s, decides that it is OK to hate us and lets us know that God does too, I am truly sickened, as she of all people should know what this means. And the effect of someone saying ‘God hates fags’ can never be underestimated either,” she added. “It’s a license to kill. It’s a death sentence. It’s not funny. It’s not OK. It’s not something I can let go easily, because I know what it truly means.”
The latest venue to drop Michelle Shocked is SPACE in Evanston, Illinois which announced on their Facebook page that, “this is no longer a show we’re willing to put our name on. The May 5th performance at SPACE has been cancelled and refunds will be issued at point of purchase.”
Shocked, indeed.
