Banned at Borders? Musician, songwriter, et al Julia Rose played a show at Borders of Fredericksburg the other week full of delightful content that led to her getting banned from playing at the store ever again.
She went to the Free Lance Star for publicity.
Entertainer banned after Bush remark
Apparently, it’s become un-American–or at least highly controversial–for a woman to publicly say that the president of the United States’ body is less than perfect.Then they wrote an editorial:A Baltimore acoustic artist has been banned from playing the Fredericksburg Borders Books & Music store–apparently because she made fun of President Bush’s legs between songs in her show Friday night at Central Park.
Julia Rose, a singer-songwriter and a fitness advocate who often shows audiences her six-pack abs, told a Fredericksburg Borders audience Friday: “George Bush has chicken legs. He needs to pump some iron.”
“I never bashed Bush as president. I merely said his lower body needs some serious definition,” Rose explained later.
She said most of the audience laughed. But a few were offended and reportedly contacted Amy Korsun, area marketing manager for Borders Books & Music, to complain about Rose making “political” comments.
IT SEEMS INCONGRUOUS that the words “ban” and “bookstore” should appear in the same sentence. But Borders Books & Music at Central Park apparently banished a singer at least in part because her commentary, including a remark about President Bush’s legs, angered some customers.They even did a political cartoon.Borders suggests that Julia Rose is simply not the local clientele’s cup of tea and that it had every right to terminate her contract. But Borders has a very scrawny leg to stand on itself if it is wielding such a quick ax on a performer who has been perfectly suitable at other Virginia stores in the chain. If there is any place in this country where freedom of expression should get the close calls, it has to be a general-interest bookstore.
To recap: Julia Rose is a singer-songwriter from Baltimore. Places like Borders are just her sort of venue, with, one would have thought, just her sort of crowd. Indeed, she’s a veteran of the Borders circuit from Northern Virginia to Richmond and was debuting at the Fredericksburg location on July 18, the fateful evening. She had been scheduled to play there next month, too. Not so now.
How bizarre. On Borders’ shelves and racks there are books, magazines, newspapers, and probably even CDs that upbraid the president over his policies and politics and poke fun at him and everyone else under the sun. Amy Korsun, the Borders marketing manager who cited Ms. Rose’s comment “George Bush has chicken legs” in terminating her, surely wouldn’t have it any other way. But one gets the feeling that when Ms. Rose sits before a mike and tweaks the president, free expression has taken the night off.
So I wrote a letter:
Not only does Ms. Rose fail to mention the many customers who left the store complaining on that Friday because of her show but she also seems to think that the fact that she sang a song about a boy making love to his blow-up doll (with sound effects) wasn’t a factor.I wonder if anyone will pay attention to those facts…She entered into a contract with Borders and entered into a FAMILY STORE and failed to fulfil her end and produced content that was entirely inappropriate for the environment.
Borders, acting on the complaints of its customers at the time, made a decision to ask Ms. Rose not to play at the Fredericksburg store again. This was completely because they were responding to the requests of FREDERICKSBURG CUSTOMERS and not company policy. This is the height of company responsibility, responding to the wishes of its customers who were there and witnessed as opposed to those that are simply acting on the word of the woman wronged who feels the need to misrepresent herself and the company in a ploy for publicity.
How can you protest a company for doing that? How can you complain about a company responding to the wishes of its customers? Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that what we say is missing from box stores?
