Joanie Banned from Walter Reed

["rslovacek" <rslovacek>]

    man, the bushiviks really suk and really hate their soldiers.  Hell,
Dylan's played West Point over the past ten or twelve years.  What bastids.


----- Original Message -----

WASHINGTON - Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez says she doesn't know
why she was not allowed to perform for recovering soldiers recently at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center as she planned.

In a letter to The Washington Post published Wednesday, she said rocker
John Mellencamp had asked her to perform with him last Friday and that she
accepted his invitation.

"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly
against the
Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago," she wrote. "I realize now
that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers
fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the
invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan. In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by
the Army to take part. Strange irony."

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.

The Post reported that Walter Reed officials did not respond to requests for
comment Tuesday, but that in an e-mailed statement published Monday on
RollingStone.com, spokesman Steve Sanderson said the medical center received
the request for participation by Baez just two days before the concert.

"These additional requirements were not in the agreement/contract and would
have required a modification," Sanderson told the magazine's Web site.

Baez's manager, Mark Spector, told the Post that Mellencamp's management
invited Baez to perform in March and handled all the arrangements. The Post
said Mellencamp's manager, Randy Hoffman, did not return calls requesting
comment and that Mellencamp's publicist said the singer was ill Tuesday and
unavailable.

But Mellencamp earlier told RollingStone.com: "They didn't give me a reason
why she couldn't come. We asked why and they said, 'She can't fit here,
period.' "






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