Baez Banned From Walter Reed!

Too bad they couldn't do the same for the mold in the rooms of Vets.

But seriously.....

This really pisses me off. This hits at me. personally.

I have loved Joan Baez for 40 some odd years.

I love music. It touches the soul in a way that the spoken word cannot.

The voices of Joan Baez and only a few others have been able to do that for me, in a way that lifts my spirit to the highest heavens.

She could have done that for those soldiers.

That's why they did not want her.

Lifted spirits, will not kill...and certainly not for money, for others no less.

I can't be reallly objective about this. Though I do not know her, pesonally, Joan Baez is off-limits, when it comes to government censorship.

God forbid that anyone might have a real spiritual experience and say," no more," to war...no more to the slaughter of human beings, for profits.

Have any of these fools ever heard her sing "Amazing Grace?"

When she sings it, it is a healing force.......

Joan Baez Banned at Walter Reed Hospital
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
(05-02) 06:26 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

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.'"

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free