The Daily: March 2, 2011
Defending Galliano? Celeb stylist Patricia Field shows support for Dior’s disgraced designer, who was fired after anti-Semitic rants in Paris.
Celebrity stylist Patricia Field shows support for Dior's disgraced designer John Galliano, who was fired after anti-Semitic rants in Paris, as others urge the former tastemaker to clean up his act.
Would you party with the Gadhafis? Jay-Z and Beyonce did.
Gadhafi's court jesters
Celebrities should know better than to perform for potentates
BY MICHAEL MAIELLO WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011
Indulge me in a thought experiment. You’re just getting home from work and you’re leafing through the mail. In between a misdelivered copy of Ladies Home Journal and your annual Social Security statement is an embossed envelope with a party invitation inside. Would you like to spend New Year’s Eve in St. Barts as a guest of Mutassim Gadhafi, Libya’s national security adviser and son of the noted dictator and murderer Moammar Gadhafi? As a bonus, he’ll pay your wife a cool million if she’ll sing and dance at the bash.
You’d say no, right? If you didn’t know who this Gadhafi fellow was, you’d Google him and then decline the invitation, right? Right? Sure, most of us would like to make a quick fortune. But I think that even in spite of our mostly rational greed that most of us are level-headed enough to decline such an offer when we know there’s a villain behind it. Even for a million bucks. This is not advanced morality. This is what comic books teach kids. Don’t take a million dollars from Lex Luthor because it’s never worth the spiritual and moral price.
But pop star pair Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé got this offer and said “sure.” For most of us, a million-dollar payday would be life-changing. But these two are millionaires many times over and they still decided to cash in and go to the party. The year before, Mariah Carey made a similar bargain. So did Usher and Nelly Furtado.
Apparently, this kind of thing goes on all of the time. Zack O’Malley Greenberg, a writer for Forbes (we’re former colleagues) has covered celebrities and the music business for years. His recently released book "Empire State of Mind" chronicles Jay-Z’s rise from projects drug pusher to megastar and entertainment executive.
“Star performers do these kinds of shows more than people realize,” he says. “Compared to traditional concerts, private shows are usually less of a hassle, tend to pay a lot more, and generally involve staying in much more interesting places — where would you rather stay: the Hilton in Milwaukee or a villa in St. Barts?”
It’s also been going on for a lot longer than people realize. Singer Nelly Furtado tweeted last week: “In 2007, I received 1million$ from the Gadhafi clan to perform a 45 min. Show for guests at a hotel in Italy. I am going to donate the $.” It’s hard to see how the moral calculus changed in four years. It seems fair to assume that she would have kept the cash in the absence of a headline-grabbing revolution.
One view of this (and I’m guessing it’s the Jay-Z view) is that entertainment is a business like any other. So maybe I should be more concerned with the ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum executives who have helped the regime extract and profit from 3 billion barrels of oil a year. Granted. But this isn’t just about business, it’s also about how the world’s wealthy and famous have welcomed murderers and criminals into what now passes for high society.
The Gadhafi family very publicly pillaged Libya’s resources, first by using violence and fear to cement its political power and then by using that power to build valuable monopolies throughout Libya’s economy. Now, U.S., British and European Union authorities have frozen more than $30 billion held by the family in accounts around the world. That’s a third of Libya’s total estimated gross domestic product for 2010. Meanwhile, 2.1 million Libyans live below the global poverty line and the country’s unemployment rate floats between 20 and and 30 percent. Where do Usher, Mariah, Beyoncé and Nelly think their wire transfers came from?
Gadhafi's son was once arrested for fighting with police officers in Rome and then, a few years later, arrested again for drunkenly leading French police on a high-speed chase on the Champs Elysées. In yet another incident, he brandished a 9 mm pistol at French police. All without consequence. Jay-Z might want to consider that in Brooklyn, L.A. or anywhere in between, if his average fan put a police officer through a tenth of what Gadhafi Jr. did, he would face serious, perhaps existential, consequences.
Obviously, the main actors at fault for coddling Gadhafi and keeping Libya’s people under his heel are the U.S. government, the European Union, the United Nations and all of the multinational businesses that have collaborated with him. Nobody’s asking singers and rap moguls to be activists, that’s up to them. But there’s no need for them to go out of their way to jester for the scum of the Earth.
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Barring a surprising turnaround in the negotiations, when you wake up Friday morning the collective bargaining agreement between NFL players and the owners will have already expired. If that happens there are a number of scenarios that could play out. Of course, if the two sides hammer out a new pact then everyone goes home happy. If they don't, then this stalemate could drag on for months, with the doomsday scenario of regular-season games being canceled. Press the play button above to have The Daily's Charles Curtis explain it all to you.
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