Previous column sparks harsh response from readers

Some of Marin’s biggest stars have signed on with the newly-formed Musicians for John Kerry organization that I mentioned in last week’s column about Teresa Heinz Kerry’s appearance at a recent campaign fund-raiser in Mill Valley.

Bonnie Raitt, Huey Lewis, the Dead’s Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann, bluesman Tommy Castro, new age pianist Suzanne Ciani, folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dan Hicks, the Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston, Pete Sears, Roy Rogers, Maria Muldaur and bassist Rob Wasserman have all agreed to volunteer their time and talents for Kerry campaign events.

Texas blues singer Marcia Ball plays a Women for Kerry gig next week at the House of Blues in New Orleans. And Boz Scaggs, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Norton Buffalo, Tracy Nelson, the Doors’ Ray Manzarek, Rodney Crowell, Charlie Musselwhite and saxophonist John Handy, among others, have also jumped on the Kerry bandwagon. A new Web site, www.musiciansforkerry.com, went up last week with all the details.

“We feel this is the most important election of our lifetime,” said Gaynell Rogers of Novato, one of the organizers. “We’re really providing a service, and it’s working really beautifully.”

I wrote last time about my disappointment with the Kerry campaign for closing Mrs. Kerry’s appearance at the Mill Valley Community Center to the press. (I got in anyway, as did an IJ reporter.) After the piece was posted on the IJ Web site, a barrage of e-mails arrived from all over the country, all but one of them from Bush-backers.

One woman who is obviously not from Marin wrote: “(Teresa) may be charming but she will never be First Lady. Marin County is not reflective of the nation, as any political analyst (sic) will be happy to confirm.”

In reaction to a little joke about lap dancing, a woman from Woodstock, Ga., went on an angry rant, ascribing a litany of sexual practices to Democrats. “Dems are a strange and horny bunch,” she said.

Because I questioned the no-press policy, most of the e-mails were of the “I told you so” variety, mistakenly equating this episode with the kind of secrecy and deception the Bush administration has been accused of by the Democrats.

“This should make alarm bells ring loudly in your head,” a guy from St. Louis wrote.

He and the other Bush supporters can’t seem to understand how I could take issue with the handling of this one thing and not hold it against the candidate or his wife. They don’t get how I could refuse to blow it out of proportion.

“You guys amaze me,” someone named Billy J. Burke wrote from Arkansas. “After not letting the press in to the function, you write glowing things about them.”

Complexity — not seeing everything as good or evil, black or white, one or the other — apparently makes these folks uncomfortable. In a sad way, it’s really kind of funny. One guy, for instance, urged me to do what he does and not think at all.

“Believe what your heart is telling you, not your head,” he said, adding a parting shot: “You need psychological help.”

I wrote a daily column during the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, but since then I haven’t had occasion to cover political campaigns. So this episode has been educational on a couple of levels.

I have since learned that it is not uncommon for campaign fund-raisers to be closed to the press. Apparently, this is true of both Democrats and Republicans. I was informed of this practice in a “letter to the editor” from Tom McInerney of San Anselmo.

“Earth to Liberatore,” he wrote. “This was a ‘fund-raiser.’ This means that those attending had contributed significant amounts in order to attend. Although Liberatore finds this concept ‘very confusing,’ has he noticed how many fund-raisers starring President Bush and his wife are open to the likes of Liberatore?

“After reading Liberatore’s preening commentary (‘At first glance, I was charmed by her,’ ‘She had on a brown pants suit that I’m guessing was an Armani,’ ‘...when she insisted on saying ‘if my husband wins,’ I had to cringe’) I applaud the Kerry campaign for attempting to close their event to such self-serving, egocentric blather. I realize that closing the event to reporters probably deprived the rest of Marin of Liberatore’s amazing wit and insight, but I’m sure it will survive.”

Another lesson: If you’re in politics, or if you write about politics, it helps to have a very thick skin.

Paul Liberatore can be reached at liberatore@marinij.com