Saturday, May 27, 2017

Manchester

We live in a scary time when we realize that violence at pop concerts is not restricted to drunk and stoned hooligans at rock or heavy metal shows.  Ariana Grande is, by all accounts, a sweet, bubbly singer influenced by rhythm and blues with an urge to get people to get up and dance.  She does not instigate rebellion or anarchy at her shows.  Her fans are, like the singer herself, mostly young and female.  So an Ariana Grande concert is the last place you would expect any danger - least of all from Grande herself, despite the fact that she actually has a hit song called "Dangerous Woman."
Maybe that's exactly why a suicide terrorist chose to blow himself up at Grande's Manchester, England show early this week.
You know what nauseates me?  I've heard arguments that you can't call a suicide bomber a coward when he's willing to take his own life, but it takes a special kind of horrible person to blow himself up at in a concert hall full of teenage girls and young women.  An Ariana Grande concert is the last thing you should have to lock up your daughters from.  
I've seen this before, but never like this.  In 1982, at a show by the punk group the Lords of the New Church, some idiot took a BB gun and shot at the stage, hitting lead singer Stiv Bators.  (Bators escaped serious injury.)  When I was a teenager, such an attack was as bad as it got in any concert.  An incident like that seems very, very inconsequential now. :-(  

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