I loved it when Baez said, “They let RATS in, why not me?”

IMHO, it is long past time to get rid of the BIGGEST RATS in this beknighted government: IMPEACH Bush and Cheney, and IMPEACH all the Opus Dei fanatics on our Supreme Court. It’s time we got our country back from these disgusting vermin!

To those who expressed surprise that “Joan Baez is still alive”, she is indeed still alive, still performing, still raising her majestic voice against hypocrisy and injustice — and newsflash — she was proven right forty years ago, and lo and behold, she’s just been proven right once again during the last year. Today’s “musicians” (I use the term only very loosely) could learn a thing or two from those like Baez and Mellencamp.

How dare those above who so boorishly insult Joan Baez! You have no right to speak for those of us who do know the reality of the effects of this war. And how dare the Army deny her offer of a gift to the suffering patients and their families? I know exactly how welcomed her presence would have been. I was at WR for 2 months; my daughter for 5, with her husband in critical care. There were few bright spots during that miserable winter. Joan Baez’s voice would have been a heavenly break from the hell that is this war.

Family-Country-Religion.In that order.In for the penny,in for the pound.The men want positive vibes.Im sure some off the parents gave there version of joan.Lets do a second version of JOAN of ARC.Sell tickets to the spectable,proceeds to Walter Reed.

Oh brother…these conservatives just can’t look in the mirror and make a true statement like “We’ve blown it again…here’s another of our righteous causes that have led soldiers to their death for NOTHING but have increased sales and income for Haliburton, Dick Cheney, the entire bush family, and the rest of those types. They loved the war in Vietname, they hated the civil rights movement, they love the war in Iraq…they love their wallets. They could care less about how many young Americans or Iraqi citizens have died in their war of greed and lies. If people would only listen to those, like Joan Baez, who have a heart and soul and know the truth, we’d be a lot better off. They were right about Vietnam and Civil Rights, they’re right NOW about bush’s war. So called conservative religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson wrap their causes in the flag and send off the young to fight and die in their wars based on lies, misinformation and greed…these same young Americans are returned wrapped in that flag and a body bag. Shame on the right-wing, shame on the shameless, self-centered, self-righteous neo-cons…they’ll certainly rot in Hell.

Baez, 66, told the Post in a telephone interview Tuesday that she was not told why she was left off the program by the Army. “There might have been one, there might have been 50 (soldiers) that thought I was a traitor,” she told the paper.

I would think that there were over 50,000!!!! That is just from the ones that died in Vietnam.

Why give her the chance at insulting the ones that have been injured in Iraq or anywhere else!

Put her in with John Kerry and you would have a pair of TRAITORS.

I didn’t know the old hag was still alive.

Kudos and cheers for Jeff C. I couldn’t have said it any better. If the war was anything more than push for Bush and his OPEC oil barons to get more for less, more people would be able to support it. i say lates support the trops and bring them home out of harms way. I don’t support the war but i think the troops should be commended for having to fight to stay alive. I am guessing there aren’t too many sons and daughters of governmet officials over there in the trenches. The anti war movement has nothing to do with anything except common sense and the ability to see no reason to be there except, greed and a corrupt government. I would like to ask the supporters of the war why they support it, but i would rather hear from the president why we are there, dying for someone elses interest. Shame on anyone that blames the troops for being there. Double shame on anyone that thinks it is a just war because of blind faith in the presidents motives.

“know it all” is a scumbag. john mellencamp blows as well.

Who cares Joan Baez has not been significant since the sixties. No one wants to see or hear her anyway.

Joan Baez does not even deserve to be in the same building as those men and women

Yeah, no one in Portland would do anything like that. It’s a bastion of conservativism. Seriously though, half of Portland is too high on heroin to do anything like burning effigies.

Yeah, you obviously don’t live in Portland…

If you saw anyone burning effigies of soldiers in Portland, you can bet it was the same kind of embedded undercover gov’t. agents, posing as protestors, which were used in VIETNAM WAR, as de-classified files from that era reveal! FBI undercover agents infiltrate Iraq War protests regularly, take photos, etc. & I’m sure there is a very active “psy-ops” unit whose mission is to discredit anti-war demonstrators!!

Joan Baez is an American and international heroine. The grey men who blocked her performance don’t have the capacity to understand that free expression is a right of free citizens everywhere. We all know how Bush will be judged by history. Joan Baez is already acknowledged as a troubador and a prophet. She gives wings to the human mind. She is preparing us to be free.

If anyone doesn’t think these soldiers are Mellencamp fans and would really see some BS like Nelly or heavy metal, read this and rethink things. This man is a legend and was the absolute best artist to deliver a special concert like this.

From VF.com

John Mellencamp is sweaty—soaked, really, and looking exhausted. It’s the night of Friday, April 27, and we’re backstage at the Old Red Cross Building, a modest auditorium on the 113-acre campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Mellencamp has just expended every ounce of his energy in a free concert for the facility’s patients, families, and staff. Though the show might appear to be a political statement—Mellencamp leans left, and he’s surely been disgusted by the recent reports of substandard care at the hospital, one of the latest scandals to tar the Bush administration—the official line is that it’s simply a night of music for wounded Iraq-war veterans and their families. “These people have been under scrutiny,” he says, “and I thought perhaps we could do something to lighten their load a little bit.” He shrugs, as if a world-class entertainer choosing to hold an intimate performance for the beleaguered center were the most obvious thing in the world.

On this balmy Friday night, some 150 people have come to see Mellencamp perform his trademark Americana on a stage that seems remarkably small for such a large musical presence. But this intimate setting is what Mellencamp had envisioned. After performing at the opening of San Antonio’s Center for the Intrepid, a rehabilitation facility, in January, he had a chance to talk to the soldiers. Wanting to do something more for the troops, Mellencamp began thinking about ways he could help; by the time the Walter Reed scandal broke, in February, he knew he had to get involved. “I did the thing down in Texas and it seemed like the thing to do,” he says. A deal was struck to broadcast the Walter Reed performance on HDNet, a subscription channel for high-definition-television junkies. This would be the channel’s first live broadcast of a concert, and HDNet co-founder Mark Cuban saw it as a perfect fit. “It’s so compelling,” he says via e-mail, noting that the channel has covered the troubles of servicemen and -women on its news shows and has offered support through Cuban’s own Fallen Patriot Fund. “This topic is near and dear to my heart.”
John Mellencamp and Karl Dorman

The day before the concert, Mellencamp toured the facilities with his impossibly luminous wife, the model Elaine Irwin-Mellencamp, visiting various buildings and connecting with patients. HDNet cameras followed him, documenting the day for what ultimately would air as a six-minute introduction to the live show. In one particularly touching moment, retired staff sergeant Karl Dorman, who lost a leg in a motor-vehicle accident just before his National Guard unit went overseas, came up to Mellencamp with a U.S.-flag-emblazoned guitar. “I figured I would see if I could get it signed,” Dorman tells me on Friday night. After approaching Mellencamp and realizing they were on camera, Dorman started playing “Pink Houses”—and after a little coaxing, he convinced Mellencamp to sing along. “Then we got to the chorus, the part where you’re singing, ‘Ain’t that America’—we started singing that out loud and proud,” Dorman says. “It was incredible—really, really powerful.”

At 7 p.m. on Friday, the doors to the Old Red Cross Building open. A decent handful of family and friends are waiting outside, eager to get in.

Inside, the small hall begins to fill. Many in the room heard of the concert only the day before, either via an army e-mail or by word of mouth. Sandra Gentry, 23, is sporting a gray hooded sweatshirt that reads 100% authentic u.s. soldier lover; her husband, Staff Sergeant Scott Gentry, arrived almost six weeks ago with shrapnel damage to his eye muscles and nerves and in need of facial reconstructive surgery. She’s been at the hospital with their three-year-old son ever since. Her husband isn’t at the show tonight, however: “He’s actually staying with our son. He said, ‘No, you can go and I’ll watch him.’ Father-and-son bonding time.” For her, tonight is “a diversion.” Later, when I tell her how impressive and optimistic the community of patients and family seems, she declares, “Walter Reed shows you the resilience of man, as in mankind.” She leans over me, making sure that I write it down, word for word.

Gradually patients begin to arrive. Their faces range from curious to excited to simply dazed; they’re in wheelchairs, using canes, or walking with prosthetic limbs. One particularly strapping patient looks to be the picture of perfect health, save for his terribly maimed face. Sitting in the front row is Emanuel Herrera, a 46-year-old sergeant who was injured (”blown up” is all he will say) in Tikrit by an I.E.D. He’s been at Reed for six months. He has a stammer, but his warm smile never wavers, and his eyes are steady and kind. He walks with two canes, and his Purple Heart is affixed to one of them. “I saw someone else asking John to sign their guitar,” he says. “Well, I didn’t have a guitar here with me, so I thought it’d be really neat if he signed my cane that has my Purple Heart on it.” He grinned when asked about the evening’s entertainment. “It’s really good that they come out and show everybody, the patients and wounded warriors, that they do care about us.… They may not support the war, but they support the troops.”

Shortly after eight o’clock, Mellencamp takes the stage. The crowd roars when he sings his first words: “I was born in a small town….” For the next hour or so, Mellencamp lets his music speak for itself. “We’re happy to show our support,” he tells the audience. “Let’s just forget about any problems we might have and let’s just have a good time.” His wife roams the auditorium, taking pictures of the crowd. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, an outspoken critic of the U.S. government’s missteps at Walter Reed, slips in and stands near a wall, smiling. Children bounce around, men sing along, and others—those who can—dance and energetically swing their hips, clapping as if they were anywhere but here.

A bit later, Mellencamp performs “Jack & Diane.” When he reaches the chorus, he turns the microphone out to the audience. There isn’t a single person who isn’t belting out the lyrics: “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of livin’ is gone.” A young man rolls his wheelchair back and forth as if to dance; his girl sits on his lap, laughing, with her arms happily wrapped around his neck as they spiritedly join in. As Mellencamp sings, “Let the Bible Belt come and save my soul,” he emphatically raises up his hands as if to beg for forgiveness. The audience does the same almost simultaneously, creating a sea of hands thrown in the air, perhaps appealing to the heavens for some mercy of their own.

As we stand in the doorway of the auditorium and watch the sweaty audience sway and sing along to one of Mellencamp’s newer songs, the ubiquitous “Our Country,” Mellencamp’s earnest publicist, Bob Merlis, turns to me. “When I think about the lyrics in this context,” he says, referring to the wounded and limbless soldiers before us, “they mean more than they used to mean.” You’d be hard-pressed to disagree. After the song ends, Mellencamp makes perhaps his only political comment of the night: “We’re gonna take that song back someday and make it real.”

Funny how Joan Baez is so threatening to the army. Some things haven’t changed. Go Joan!

I support the troops but not what they are doing. Because whether they know it or not, they are in Iraq not to make the US safer, but to defend the economic interests of a handful of wealthy Saudi oil sheiks, some of whom support terrorism against the U.S.

Pretty funny, Mellencamp trying to portray Ms. Baez as a nice old lady. This is the same woman who - bless her heart - used the opportunity of an invitation to the White House in 1965 to confront Lyndon Johnson personally and directly about the Vietnam War. (For those who weren’t around back then, suffice it to say that very few people , not a whole lot of people had yet come out publicly against that debacle.) That warmongering President and his handlers probably assumed she wouldn’t have the guts to say anything to his face. They misunderestimated her. She was a nice lady back then, too, but a fierce one. Still is.

Like In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Buy the new live album,
Baez and Rather at Walter Reed

I agree with abandonedstation.

I think its more likely that heavy metal and hardcore rap are on the stereos of troops in Iraq than “Jack And Diane” or “Hurt So Good”. They’d probably have rather had something more contemporary.

But, Mellancamp volunteered or whatever. Beggers can’t be choosers

Hippies smell like rotting flesh with a hint of mold.

Timroc….you should grow a set, and stop being so PC. Mellencamp WILL be dead soon. Hey - if he wants to speed up the process, I wouldn’t stop him. As far as Joan Baez, no one talks about how she used to turn tricks back in the old days.

John Mellencamp? Joan Baez? Fleetwood Mac?
With all due respect to these artists, most of the wounded soldiers weren’t even alive when these people made it big, and I can’t imagine it’s choice listening for almost all of them.
Why can’t the army allow Slayer or White Zombie or (shudder) Drowning Pool to play at Walter Reed? That’s more likely to be the stuff the soldiers in Iraq listen to in their hum-vees. Are these bands too violent and dark to be sanctioned by the military?
It’s another paradox in the presentation of war. The proud, young Americans listen to John Mellencamp when they’re mowing down the enemy, not metal…

John Mellencamp is a brilliant and highly underrated songwriter. “Freedom’s Road” is a terrific album and has my early vote for album of the year in 2007. It’s that good. Don’t listen to what the other guy said. It’s an outstanding and highly inspired piece of work by an artist who is always pushing the envelope.

How Mellencamp is not in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame is beyond me.

John will get the credit he deserves someday, but I don’t know when.

Hi Evan,

I’ll answer your questions. They’re fair questions.

1. “Hippies didn’t attach themselves to a popular opinion. They created one.”

Wrong…revolutionaries created the movement. Hippies(mostly upper middle class white kids with college educations) misinterpreted the movement as an excuse to drop out of having to grow up and be responsible for our society. They used it to remain in a state of adolescense ignoring the day to day life and death struggle of the average and less fortunate. Peace, Love(sex) and Drugs that was their way to conquer the man. Denial and complicit apathy yeah that’s a real effective strategy against the highly organized and determined corporate military industry. Yea! for Tyrranny… I love pot and not taking a bath…yea!

2. “Furthermore, if she she’s always been disconnected, how could being rich and famous make her any more so”

You’ve not ever been hungry for any length of time have you? Very few people who haven’t experienced poverty as their lot have an ability to understand what it’s like to be born into poverty. Being born to a family with no skill, no talent, low intelligence, and virtually no chance for strengthening their minds to achieve a better future for isn’t something they know as their own reality. By definition they are disconnected from it. Joan may have started out as an idealist but it’s my estimation that she found a good pony to ride and stuck with it. She doesn’t know what it’s like to really be poor. She may have tried on the poor suit for a minute but she’s among the posh now and their is no denying that. There’s nothing wrong with being wealthy but don’t present yourself as just like folk when it’s obvious you’re not. She’s incredibly disingenuous.

3. “I’ve had the opportunity to see her perform at my school last year (I’m 20) and happened to have been seated about 25 feet from her. She didn’t seem “not nice” to me.”

You may not have been able to notice that from 25ft away. Especially since she was on stage and in costume as it were. I’ve spoken to her face to face. In my experience she is not the grand ‘ol Earth Mother her stage show would have you believe she is. It’s show business for crying out loud.

Look, I’m gonna to level with you. I’m not somebody who has always felt this way about her. I was devestated after my encounter with her. I cried uncontrollably for nearly an hour. It was a gut check and a total shock to my system. I reached out to her in a genuine idealist spirit with something to offer to the war resistance movement and she spewed out her disgust and true self. I’ll never forget it. Say what you will but I know a phony when I see one.

I’ve spoken with famous people on numerous occasions and have never been treated so much like I was a peon as badly as I was by her. The last person you would expect to act like they’re too good for the little guy was the very one who did it. She does not deserve to be remembered without this truth mentioned.

Joan has always supported humans, just not the wars in which they embroil themselves. Her humanitarian ethics were behind her desire to perform. Any soldier offended by her’s or Mellencamp’s politics have the same rights as the rest of society - not to listen. To bad they don’t have the right to choose to listen if they so desire. The government made that choice for the soldiers (who were presumably fighting to maintain American freedom)by preventing the appearance of Joan Baez.

Funny how no one has brought up the fact that the last Fleetwood Mac album was a very loud anti-war album if anyone chose to listen.

It is dissapointing to read such negative comments sometimes, dead in ten? old hiptser? A little too sanctimonious folks. How about a little tolerance and love.

Mellencamp will be dead soon anyways….

Stevie Nicks has been a regular visitor to Walter Reed for several years now. Very little fanfare. No political statement, just a heart in the right place.

I’m glad they banned Joan Baez. Just look at her…..if I’m recovering in a hospital, her ugly mug is the last thing I want to be seeing.

I’ve always been a huge John Mellencamp fan (since I was 10 years old and Im 36)and I’d like to think that he has come back around to being pro-humanity rather than just anti-Bush. That said, the new CD is the weakest thing he has ever done. I think the politics are ahead of the music (where Lonesome and Big Daddy had great SONGS that may have also had a poitical message)

The last great John Melencamp CD was the self-titled one from 1998

I commend Mellencamp for actually doing something for the soldiers. I do believe he can be against the war and still be supportive of our troops. He seems to have shifted recently from the “us vs. them” mentality as far the war and social climate in the country to “we”, as in we are all Americans free to have different opinions, but still be united .
I haven’t seen too many anti-war singers do much for the troops or their families. It seems odd how Springsteen has gotten more politcal recently but doesn’t seem to as visible with his social cause work.

“Taste,” your logic bewilders me. Hippies didn’t attach themselves to a popular opinion. They created one. There were people protesting the Vietnam War when it was still mostly a very popular war among most Americans. Baez was one of them. Furthermore, if she she’s always been disconnected, how could being rich and famous make her any more so, and for that matter how did she become that way in the first place? I’m confused. I’ve had the opportunity to see her perform at my school last year (I’m 20) and happened to have been seated about 25 feet from her. She didn’t seem “not nice” to me. More like a dedicated artist as well as a down-to-earth woman who does what she feels passionate about and does so with aplomb and has been for 40 years. Kudos.

She’s not exactly a saint anyway. She’s a bitter old foul-mouthed jerk that was washed up 40 years ago. Despite popular opinion she doesn’t represent a peace movement or an ideology that seeks to make the lives of the truly downtrodden any better. She’s just like all the rest of the hippies from her time; a bunch of phonies who glommed onto a popular attitude. Same as being a jerk hipster these days. Or a rapper. She elevated herself to fame and wealth by portraying herself as regular folk. Her fame and wealth ultimately left her far more disconnected and clueless to the realities of folk life than she ever was as a teenager. Funny how someone so privileged can trick the world into thinking she’s just a regular kind of gal. What a joke. She’s a phony. Period. I’ve met her. She’s not nice.

Takes one to know one duchess. But have faith, I’m sure the US will one day reach the levels of horror Europe has brought on the rest of the world in the last 500 years.

dear duchess, you’re a kinder, gentler machine gun hand:)

Joan Baez is still alive? Who knew?

It’s not a war…it’s an illegal invasion….condemmed by the rest of the world………your leaders should by tried for crimes against humanity…..hung like the criminal bastards they are

Jeff, you just gotta think about it from his perspective. He goes out and risks his life, and when he sees the TV he sees people burning effigies of soldiers like down in Portland a few weeks ago. I’m in the Air Force and I can tell you that many of us don’t support the war either, but we get defensive when people protest because, unfortunately, it’s hard not to lump the protestors who hate the war but not soliders and the protestors who hate the war AND the soldiers together. It’s kind of the natural psychological thing to do. Mike Shaw has been hurt and he probably feels very unappreciated by his own people, so he reacts that way. I’m not saying it’s right, but I certainly understand what he’s saying. Keep on trying to bring the boys home though, that’s all good, but just make sure you don’t join those people burning soldier effigies, rallying behind deserters, and picketing outside military bases. Those people don’t help anyone. All they do is spread hate in the name of love and non-violence.

Uhh….what are we doing over there?

“I say if you’re not supporting what we’re doing you’re not supporting me,” said Mike Shaw, a combat engineer from Corona, California who broke his back in Iraq last month when he was hit by an IED.

- This comment makes me sad. There’s a big difference in being against the war and being against the troops. I feel like being against this war is being for the troops.