Yes. I pick and choose my battles.

That's fine, I was just clarifying. Did Gerard have anything to say about the kerfuffle, or did he wisely keep his head low?

As far as I know, he did not speak on the topic.

Going back a bit:

Seriously, I think that's a false issue. People have tried to get out of bad contracts by doing stuff like grunting into a microphone for twenty hours, or sticking RCA with Metal Machine Music.

I think you missed my point, or perhaps it's just our dramatically differing perspectives. I'd rather she grunted into a mic for 20 hours. My issue is with the ableism and her response when called on it. Mostly the latter. It's just the sauce on top that it was a concept that she arrived at to solve a personal issue.

It's just the sauce on top that it was a concept that she arrived at to solve a personal issue.

I'm not privy to her thought process on the matter, but I expect that when one avenue closed to her, she simply decided to pursue another collaborative project that had probably been brewing in her mind for a while.

My issue is with the ableism and her response when called on it.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, but is there any response she could've made aside from "You're right and I'm wrong; I'll change immediately" that would've ameliorated the situation?

You don't have to continue the discussion is you find it fruitless or frustrating. I'm just curious to hear your perspective on that event.

ION, a fascinating early Super-8 film of the Residents in the early seventies, without their masks, just living together like crazy art-school radicals.

Seeing them this way links them in my mind with The Cockettes, Can, The Factory, and the Mystik Knights of the Oingo Boingo/Forbidden Zone and other such hippie-ish art collectives in that late sixties/early seventies zone.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, but is there any response she could've made aside from "You're right and I'm wrong; I'll change immediately" that would've ameliorated the situation?

Yes, she could have said "I am sorry I upset people", instead of trying to tell people that they were overreacting, didn't they know she was an arTEEST?

I try to stay out of the AP & Evelyn Evelyn fight, because while I really don't like how AP handled it, the Evelyn Evelyn thing lead to some fantastic opportunities for a dear friend. So I'm massively conflicted.

Yes, she could have said "I am sorry I upset people"

Would that have been enough if she continued on with the project as she had imagined it? I expect it would've been better received but I don't think that addresses the issues raised.

I'm curious because I don't think I've ever seen the end-game of the argument. The logical implication of the objection is that it's ethically wrong to use an experience beyond your own as a metaphor. This is consistent with Kantian ethics (don't use people as a means to an end) but the aesthetic implications are pretty dire.

So I see the argument as a kind of polite tiptoeing up to that point and then people hem and haw because they really don't want to proscribe what an artist could do. But there's a strong implication of what an artist should do. Which is to already know these objections about privilege as if they've got a background in womens' studies/black studies/queer studies which is where most of this theory derives.

But I find the discussion in fandom to be very closed and hermetic. Race Fail Bingo (to cite an obvious example) precludes argument; all of those issues are pre-argued. Defined by their existing terms and terminology.

So, while I expect Amanda Palmer could've dealt with the situation more gracefully, I'm really not down with putting a political template out before an ARTISTE. I think that makes bad art.

I'll also plump for art that is transgressive, and object to art which is inoffensive.

For me, the objections are proscriptive. They presume an ideologically proper approach to the subject matter.

Yeah, you can deal with shit a lot more gracefully than tweeting crap like this

setting aside 846 emails and removing the disabled feminists from her mental periphery, @amandapalmer sat down to plan her next record.

Yeah, you can deal with shit a lot more gracefully than tweeting crap like this

Maybe I'm just used to a fairly high self-absorbed asshole content in my rock and roll, but that doesn't even ping me.

I mean I've got Chuck "I like to shit on women" Berry, Jerry Lee "I married my underaged cousin and probably murdered a couple people" Lewis and John "I used to be mean to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" Lennon in my collection and that's just off the top of my head.

So "I'm not going to think about disability rights at the moment because I need to work on my next album" really doesn't rank high on my list of objectionable.

You mean when they call Jerry Lee "The Killer", they mean it literally?

So "I'm not going to think about disability rights at the moment because I need to work on my next album" really doesn't rank high on my list of objectionable.

And it might not, were those the words she had used, rather than saying what she did say while blocking anyone who had tweeted "Umm, you understand the problematic nature, right?" and flailing about saying people didn't understand her geeeeeeeeeeeeenius. It was a douche move.

And Chuck and Jerry and John weren't depending on their fans to feed them without a middle man while they were on tour.