I’ve written a lot of stuff regarding Bob Langstaff’s actions in response to the Gucci Mane concert. Yesterday, Langstaff responded on his blog. His side of the story should be noted. Go on a read it here and I’ll wait for you to get back.
Now that you’ve done that, I want to quote Commissioner Langstaff’s email to City Manager Al Lott and Civic Center Director John Mazzola.
Subject: RE: Gucci Mane
Well, I’m appalled.
Al and John, what do you need from me to keep this “entertainer” from performing at Albany’sCivic Center?
If this cannot be resolved “in house,” then please set up a special called meeting immediately so that the city commission can adopt policy guidelines for performers at the civic center.
I found some of his lyrics online at:
http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/gucci_mane_lyrics_4360/writing_on_the_wall_lyrics_95003/going_in_lyrics_918697.html
This is not appropriate for our civic center. Who approved this “entertainer?”
Bob
Bob Langstaff, Jr.
City Commissioner Ward 5
Now, that’s the back story in totality pretty much.
Commissioner Langstaff makes some point that I agree with. For example:
I am hoping that we can adopt a policy that EVERYONE pays the retail, published rate for civic center use, unless the city commission or an advisory committee votes to provide some sort of subsidy. By subsidy, I mean that a producer will sometimes convince the civic center to reduce certain fees in exchange for a larger percentage of the concessions, or waive certain fees just to land the act. In this sense, the taxpayers wind up “subsidizing” the show.
This, I have no problem with. None at all. However, Commissioner Langstaff has no problem with subsidizing some acts. Personally, I think our tax dollars can be better spent than in entertainment. You know, things like cops? I don’t think Commissioner Langstaff disagrees on that one though.
What strikes me as odd is that subsidies are never mentioned in his email to the city manager and civic center director. If this was a guiding principle for him, why wasn’t there any questions about who’s paying for what? Honestly, there’s no mention of money at all. All that’s said is that Gucci Mane is “inappropriate” for the Civic Center. I disagree…anyone who sells tickets should be considered “appropriate”.
However, there are a few points I’d like to address. Here’s another quote from Commissioner Langstaff’s blog:
I also think we can learn something from the movie and music industries, as well as the public library. A 16 year old can’t get into an R rated movie without an adult, but he can go see a KKK rally or Gucci Mane at the civic center. I understand that a young kid cannot buy the hard core Gucci Mane CD without an adult, but the kid can go to the civic center and hear him live without an adult.
On one hand, he makes a good point. Unfortunately, he’s comparing apples to a Chevy Nova. You see, those restrictions he mentions are facts of life, no denying it. However, those are also industry adopted standards. The Motions Picture Association of America decided on their own rating system, the same is true for the recording industry. Neither was a public entity to start with. Now, asking the concert promoters to rate them voluntarily, then I guess we have a valid comparison…and I’m really OK with something like that.
Now, in all fairness, Langstaff is actually hoping for a civic center association to willingly adopt a rating system. Honestly, I’m not sure of the legality of this, since these are publicly owned venues, and as such enforcing a rating system may well delve into free speech areas as well. Asking promoters to rate them is a lot easier to envision and is of a lot more white and black area of the law. Still, this isn’t that big of a deal to me. So long as people can still get to the concerts they want to get to.
However, there’s more.
It’s time to set the record straight on the issue. The real issues are (a) protecting our kids and (b) protecting the taxpayers.
This whole thing started when a citizen sent me an email with a link to a Gucci Mane youtube video that seemed very offensive to me persnally[sic]. I heard the n-word used a lot, but couldn’t really understand most of the lyrics. So I pulled the lyrics up online, and found that some of Gucci’s lyrics promote the use of illegal drugs and the…how do I say it…unloving use of women. I challenge you to go online, and actually read some of the lyrics. They’re not as innocent as some people are claiming.
I don’t know who was claiming the lyrics are “innocent”. I flat out said they’re all about sex and drugs. And no, that sex isn’t always “loving”. In fact, what lyrics I could understand weren’t even close to innocent, and I believe I said that.
However, lyrics in and of themselves are neither here nor there. If this is supposed to be about “protecting our kids”, I have to ask where the parents fit into this? I know what my son is listening to. From what Commissioner Langstaff is saying, I get the feeling he knows what his kids are listening to as well. Trying to block a concert, or types of acts, won’t do the job.
Understand that no kid in that audience on Saturday will be listening to Gucci Mane for the first time. Trust me, the damage is already done. You can not govern enough to make up for a break down in parenting. No matter how much you legislate, you’ll never be able to replace an absent or incompetent mother or father. Instead, you’ll just be trampling on the rights of others.
Hopefully, the concert will do well and we can move on from this with an understanding that we don’t have to like the music being performed, but if it helps Albany in the long run, maybe it’ll be worth it.
I’m getting my morning comments in along with a cup o’ coffee.
This is a collateral issue, and I do not mean to single Bob out for what seems to be a common practice, but as I glanced over Bob’s email to Mssrs. Lott and Mazzola, it occurs to me that the commission is a legislative body that exercises its power and authority as a whole. Each commissioner has no power individually, only as a voice and a vote on the commission. That’s how I understand it.
And the commission process, by law, needs to be out in the sunshine, at a public meeting.
The commission as a body must direct the city manager and, typically, the city manager will direct his report, the Civic Center manager.
If I am wrong on this, will someone please advise?
So, let me take it further… given all the difficulties we’ve had regarding some individual acts, shouldn’t the staff and all city employees be clearly advised that they take their marching orders from management, not a commissioner individually?
You or I have the same authority vis-a-vis telling a city employee what to do that a commissioner has indivudually.
None.
On the basis of the framework of city government, it looks like you’re right on the money. However, a commissioner may have influence on other commissioners, which can be translated into votes in the bag from the get go. Not illegal, but not exactly right either.
And you’re right, I could have sent that exact same email to Lott and Mazzola with the same authority. But because they answer to the commission as a whole, they know they have to play nice with a city commission…at least on the surface. Something that they wouldn’t have to keep in mind with me. I have no direct influence on their funding, for example.
For the record, I’m not saying Bob Langstaff threatened either, nor implied a threat either. Just talking hypotheticals.
I would think Mr. Lott as CEO or COO of an organization would like to have clear management authority and direction from his board.
Since much discussion is about limiting free speech and such issues and passing resolutions, how about the commission passing a resolution that no city employee should take orders from a commissioner unless the commission grants that authority, like a committee appointment and the like. And pass a resolution that any commish who violates gets your Chinese water torture or has to speed toward Columbus, but cannot identify himself as a city commissioner.
Oh Peter, I do like your sense of humor!
thanks Donna… a little levity in this life can’t hurt, can it?
To me, this Gucci issue and First Amendment rights and the Civic Center as an open forum to any perfomance that pays the price and what kind of culture do we want our kids and families living in and what is Albany today and where is it going…… there is no resolution to all that at once.
My wife properly tells me, stop all the distractions (like this one) and go make some money. Wow, is she ever right. Has been for years.
Same for the city in my humble view. Put the other stuff down the priority list or deal with it effectively and get back to the big stuff. How is this city going to turn around economically? How will new employers, big and small, be attracted to Albany? How will today’s businesses and citizens prosper? How will we fill all that empty space downtown with businesses that will prosper? How about Slappey, Oglethorpe, Broad – even Dawson Road? How do we bring new visitors with money to this market to leave some dollars behind?
Let’s have a dialogue and a summit about the economic engine. There has been more political and public and media discussion about Buie and his transgressions and ADDICA and Gucci Manucci than about how to gen up this local economy before more of it crosses the Lee County line or disappears altogether.
It’s easier to dwell on concerts and theft isn’t it?
I don’t know why but I did go check out the filthy lyrics of two of the songs. They were exactly what I expected. Irreverent, self-destructive, drug-promoting, women-demeaning, self-centered, almost incomprehensible gibberish which puts street life on a pedestal. I reiterate. I wouldn’t go near the concert.
Bob misses the point. There is an audience for this garbage. This garbage-loving audience pays taxes. This garbage-loving, tax-paying audience may not want to attend the Christian rap acts that Bob’s family enjoys. They also may not want to listen to the Christian, country western, folk, and rock groups that I enjoy. I like everything from big band to hard rock, but have only heard a small handful of rap that I liked. (BTW, I also disagree with libraries taking out books like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but thats an issue not currently on the front burner.) This drivel about lyrics, misses the point.
Drawing up rules, subsidizing non-offensive acts, etc. is backdoor censoring. Can Bob give us an idea of the rules he proposes? What will be deemed unacceptable? Curse words? Racial terms? Drugs? Violence? Anything unhealthy? Anything inconsistent with the welfare of taxpayers? Religious conventions? Shooting ducks? See where this is going?
Who is going to sit on the panel? What if the Civic Center Act Approval Panel is composed of fans of gansta rap? Where will we be then Bob?
WALB says that GM’s concert promoter has called a news conference for sometime this afternoon. Wonder what he has to say?
We will see.
A few comments earlier, I raised the issue of priorities and, Tom, in an earlier post you mentioned that you were told that Don Buie mentioned that he thought the new Dollar Square store might put the little sundry-dress shop at 315 W. Broad out of business. I’ll publicly admit to having told you that.
Well, I drove by the sundry-dress shop today, and I saw a going out of business sign on the window. The door was locked so I don’t know what triggered the closing.
If indeed a lack of business was a factor, the dollar store as Buie had predicted surely hurt.
Perhaps the Dollar Square looks better and has more inventory and could theoretically be a good fit in the long run, but it again may question using public dollars to open one business and simply take dollars from another. Or perhaps the owner of the sundry store might have been part of the deal to reposition the business.
It becomes ever more clear that in the long run, we need to look for businesses that bring NEW revenues and visitors into the market.
And for that we likely need a real plan including the voice of the property owners and the downtown business community.
Bon Langstaff is a [edited by Jeff for language. try to at least use a euphemism please]. If he was interested in “protecting the taxpayers” as he says, he wouldn’t constantly be advocating dumping more tax money into a financial sinkhole like Downtown Albany.
Likewise, if he was concerned about subsidies, he would advocate the elimination of a corruption riddled entity like ADICA whose whole purpose appears to be the subsidizing of select businesses with tax dollars.
The truth is that Bob Langstaff cooked up this phony issue of Gucci Mane because he wants to divert attention from his hopelessly incompetent oversight of ADICA and its convicted felon CEO, Don Buie.
Likewise, if Bob Langstaff were serious about Albany’s economy continuing to have a pulse, he wouldn’t have prostituted himself to a gaggle of cranks and country club fruitcakes intent on subjecting Albany’s surviving businesses to an anti-business, anti-job sign ordinance.
Harsh, I know, but sometimes being truthful is more important than being polite.
Contrived or not, I do like Bob’s emphasis in his blog. He suggests he is for a better environment for our children. He also claims to protect the interests of the taxpayers.
Being for the kids translates to safety, education, health, values, opportunity….it’s mighty big and good stuff. Let’s see how he would translate that to action.
He could have used the term “citizens” or “residents” or “voters,” but he chose the word “taxpayers” which, to me, translates to “watching the taxpayers’ money thereby reducing the need for higher taxes from them in the future.” There has been a lot of clamor about taxes lately so he in synch on that point in theory.
I like the values that he has held up. So maybe the messages that many folks have been sending on these issues are being heard.
What better result than to have the elected official take heed?
Now the question is how the representative acts on it. Maybe there is a Spiderman or Mr. Incredible there after all (inside joke – he wore those costumes at Halloween parties – my wife liked his Spidey costume — sorry).
And we do need superheroes in Albany.
As to your condemnation of the downtown, I’m hurt. It is not a sinkhole. Instead, it is an essential ingredient for economic salvation in Albany!!!
What will work? Let me put my modesty aside.
I have a concept and development plan that WILL work. The investment need not be in a sinkhole. And the result WILL benefit business and community development outside the downtown.
Can’t guarantee that all the parties with input will like all the pieces, but I bet the players with moolah and/or experience in the game will take a good look if the city is in on the package to generate new commercial tax revenues.
It is ludicrous to not bring the private and public sector together and work on a comprehensive use and development plan. The talent is here.
A viable public-private package should have been part of the whole development scene from the very start.
So now the pieces are lying around loose and unorganized. They need to be put together like the kids bike that comes in a box.
And we need to write the instruction manual.