Ruth's Report: Don't they have manners in Ukraine?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a joke. He is over a regime that is a bunch of Nazis -- I say that as a Jew. The US should never have backed him, should never have pushed the proxy-war with Russia.

But what I want to talk about tonight is basic manners.

I have no idea why any university in the United States would want that jerk to speak to their students. John Hopkins University? It has always been a neocon, pro-war sewer. So Zelenskyy gave the commencement address. Via a satellite hook up. And he wore a t-shirt.

That is not appropriate. If you are attending a graduation, you are supposed to dress up. If you are delivering a speech to a graduating class, and you are male, you are supposed to wear a tie.

He keeps doing this. He has disrespected the Congress with his mode of dress. He had done the same with many other universities (though for Stanford, he managed a sweater). And now a t-shirt.

There is no reason to have that man speak to begin with.

And let me repeat that his supporters are racists.

One more thing. In school, I never read a single paragraph about Winston Churchill going to the United States during World War II to speak to graduating classes. The fact that Zelenskyy keeps doing this might go a long way towards explaining why his side is losing the war -- that and the fact that his side is disgusting.

This is C.I.' s "Iraq snapshot" for today:

Thursday, May 25, 2023. Tina Turner is the focus for the snapshot today.

The Queen of Rock and Roll has died. This after a multi-decade career which saw Tina Turner awarded with 12 Grammys -- the only woman to win a Grammy in all three popular music genres -- rock, soul and pop.

As a member of a revue, she found fans in 1960 with her vocals on "A Fool In Love." She would next touch recording genius when she went into the studio with Phil Spector for "River Deep, Mountain High." Phil wanted nothing to do with the revue, he just wanted Tina in the studio by herself to record the vocal. Just as Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong had nothing to do with "Someday We'll Be Together" (Diana Ross is the only Supreme that sings on that number one song), Tina was the only artist from the revue performing on that song.

Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote the song with some tinkering around by Phil. It was the culmination of Phil's entire work. And it flopped in the US. It only went to 88 on the US pop charts but it went to number three in England and the song is now considered a historically and artistically significant recording, one that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and one that regularly makes the lists of all time great recordings.

It greatly expanded the appreciation of and audience for Tina Turner. She recorded the song in 1966. For context, Cher was also a solo artist and part of a duo at this time. In 1967, Sonny & Cher would have their last significant hit of the decade with "The Beat Goes On" (number six on the US pop chart) and Cher would have her last significant solo hit of the decade with "You Better Sit Down Kids" (number nine on the US pop chart). Both women, who would become great friends, saw the careers sag and both would look at the older men in charge of the duo and say they needed to modernize and go younger. Sonny didn't believe that was the answer. Tina had more luck because the revue was forever doing club dates and needed to have songs that got the room pumping so current hits by others could be worked in. As a result of Tina's interest in and love of the music around her, she would do vocals on covers such as "Let It Be," "Honky Tonk Woman," "I Want To Take You Higher," "Get Back," "Everyday People," "With A Little Help From My Friends," "Up On The Roof" and many more. She always made the songs her own.

Many would only realize how great her interpretive skills were when she took "Proud Mary" back into the top ten in 1971. I just probably do a note right here that I knew Tina and she was a great friend. In this obit, we're not naming people who were mean to her. That's not just her first husband, that's also people who thought it was cute, as late the 80s, to refer to Tina with the n-word. So if you see "Proud Mary" and think of some 60s White group, don't e-mail me telling me I should have included their racist ass in this entry. It's not an oversight on my part, this is about honoring Tina and I'm not honoring anyone who hurt her.

Tina took the tired 60s song and made it unique. Resulted in a Grammy win.

She also was a song writer. One of the songs she wrote was the song about her hometown "Nutbush City Limits." It would become a top forty hit in the early seventies and she would re-record it and perform it repeatedly throughout her career.

She was an amazing live performer and one of the few women who could regularly fill auditoriums. Janis Joplin recognized Tina's onstage brilliance as did audiences. Of the female musical artists who came to fame in the sixties and survived (Janis would pass away shortly after that decade ended; Joni Mitchell would garner her audience in the 1970s), Tina was part of a rare group of women who set records with ticket sales for their performances -- it was Tina, it was Cher and it was Diana Ross.

Aretha Franklin! No, it was just those three. Aretha didn't tour that often and she had a reputation by the end of the 70s as cancelling too often that led to poor ticket sales -- you don't want to buy a ticket, make plans to attend only to show up and find out that the artist has decided they're not doing the concert. Cher, Diana Ross and Tina were the three that sold tickets.

She made a name for herself and she did it with hard work. No one was going to take her name from her.

I, TINA, her 1986 book with Kurt Loder, was made into the film WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT starring Angela Bassett who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the film.

Part of the story of Tina Turner is her courage and her love for life and people. She was terrorized throughout the sixties and most of the seventies by a man who claimed to love her but didn't. He was a liar and he was a thief who stole songwriting credits throughout his career. His beating up Tina was well known by the time he thankfully died. But, for those too young to remember, when he did die in 2007, there were people trying to praise him and trying to minimize what he did. Those people included Danny Schechter who thought doing one interview with Tina gave him 'insight' into her abuser and that Tina needed to forgive him and . . .

Garbage. Ava and I took that on in 2007 and this is from what we wrote and I am pulling the man's name (he's called by his last name in the clip earlier from WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT IT):

Now reading some of the boys last week, it appeared that the film What's Love Got To Do With It confused them. Or possibly it was Angela Bassett's fighting figure that confused them? Her deltoids are world class and could qualify her for a bodybuilding competition, no question. While she gave an amazing performance, it was too strong to capture Tina (offstage) in the days before she left [terrorist]. The body type was wrong as well which is why it's so very jarring when Tina takes over the performance during the last minutes of the film's final scene. It's equally true that [terrorist] was softened by the actor performing him who also had the benefit of being attractive.

Somehow, the film's timeline?, some people seem to have the idea that he beat her up real bad in a limo in Dallas in 1976 and Tina up and left. Wrong. He beat her repeatedly. He beat her through the sixties, he beat [her] through the seventies until she left. And when she left, this 'kind' man threatened to kill her and did a little more than threaten.

That wasn't about 'love.' What's love got to do with it? Not a damn thing.

Tina was a meal ticket and long before [terrorist] moved into his 'open' relationship ('open' for him only, of course), Tina was well aware of his many girlfriends, mistresses and one-night-stands. When she would try to leave, he would beat her. When she did leave, he would pull her off a bus and beat her. When the song didn't sail up the charts, he'd beat her. When he was having a bad day, he'd beat her. When he thought she was getting too much credit (she was the act), he'd beat her. He'd beat her for any reason whenever he damn well felt like it. It was a non-stop abusive relationship.

And, sad to say, many of the rock press knew about it when they were together and many of them sided with [terrorist]. That was the attitude in the rock press. It was especially the attitude at Rolling Stone and, for those who doubt it, you can comb the archives and find that attitude displayed everywhere -- even in an article on Sonny & Cher's then-new TV show, where it was 'shared': "Many of my friends favor the belief that after work Sonny beats the sh*t out of her with a tire iron." (For those too lazy to do their own research, the pig 'sharing' that bit of 'amusement' was Chris Hodenfield.)

That was the Rolling Stone attitude. It didn't disappear. In 1981, editor Brant Mewborn was screaming loudly for the magazine to feature Tina (who just done two multiple night engagements of SRO business at the Ritz and been brought on Saturday Night Live by Rod Stewart to sing a duet of "Hot Legs") and the reaction was one of indifference, one of 'she walked out on [terrorist].' The abuse was well known by then. Didn't matter. That was the 'feel' and 'mood' at Rolling Stone: Tina walked out on the man who beat her, she didn't matter.

Rolling Stone was long aware of what actually went on in The [terrorist] and Tina Turner Revue. Some of the truth leaked out in Ben Fong-Torres' hard hitting piece in the magazine's October 14, 1971 issue. Rolling Stone was made even more aware after the publication of the article when the police nabbed a man who had been hired by Ike to break the legs of Ben Fong-Torres and publisher Jann Wenner. The article noted his 'flirtations' with other women and his heavy coke use.

Tina was the one who got them to update their sound when their music was dying in the sixties. So the idea that "even Tina has to" feel anything is beyond belief.

She was enslaved. She wasn't allowed to live her life. She wasn't allowed to practice her religion. She wasn't allowed to be just an artist in the revue. She would try to bargain her way out of the relationship with that and [terrorist] would just beat her.

He beat her because he was damn lucky she presented herself in his life. He beat her because he couldn't beat men and he couldn't make the male singers stay. He beat her because she was his ticket to big money and big fame. Even with all her talents provided him with, he still beat her and that was because he really couldn't take the fact that no one really considered it "[terrorist] and Tina," it was just Tina. Which is why the Who wanted Tina for their film (Tommy) and not [terrorist]. Which is why Phil Spector wanted Tina (and not [terrorist] for "River Deep Mountain High." By the end of the act, he couldn't even keep it together in the studio.

He beat her over and over for their entire relationship. He beat her with his fists, he beat her with wire hangers, he beat her with whatever was handy. An electrical cord could and would do. He threatened her with death (repeatedly) if she left him.

[. . .]

No, Elijah, [terrorist] did not "discover" Tina. And comparing the serial physical abuse Tina endured for over sixteen years to a sex act ("groupies and playthings") reveals a lot of stupid. The choice of the word "treatment" as opposed to "abuse" ("his treatment of her") is also sadly revealing. (Wald does use abuse elsewhere. But we don't think abuse is "treatment." Even "mistreatment" would be an improvement over "treatment.") As for Wald's claim in the article that a White musician's death wouldn't result in the same kind of obituary attention to his violence, give us an example? We can provide one who would get the same treatment: Phil Spector.

And that would have been true if he'd died long before Lana Clarkson was murdered. He was another control freak and he was abusive to Ronnie Spector. Not on an [terrorist] scale but few people in the world will reach that kind of scale while in the spotlight.

Jim asked us to write about this and showed an e-mail explaining why this topic needed to be addressed. A reader of two years had been on the AOL message boards and saw [terrorist]'s abuse minimized by guys with man-crushes on [terrorist] who repeatedly down-played the physical abuse of Tina Turner, the beatings, the crimes. The reader said it brought back for her the denial she was met with when she brought charges against her then husband for abuse.

Boys, it's sad when your heroes have feet of clay, we understand. It must be even sadder when your hero turns out to be an abusive crook. But that is the reality of [terrorist]. And he didn't 'just beat Tina once,' he did so repeatedly. And the message that the reader copied and pasted into her e-mail, where a man was saying that all that happened, all that caused Tina to leave, was [terrorist] was in a bad mood and just slapped her, is a nice little fantasy for those who need their daily dose of denial. But it's not reality.

[. . .]

Nor are we willing to allow that [terrorist] got a bum deal because his abuses, his crimes, were noted in his obits. He was an abuser who regularly beat Tina, made her live in fear (to the point that she once tried to take her own life just to be free of him -- a detail that got left out by the [terrorist] Defenders) and really only controlled her because she was a woman. He thought it was his 'right' and when men defend him, they, intentionally or not, further that message. The reader who wrote saw her then-husband convicted of violent abuse (some of which he admitted to in court but tried to justify it with the 'pressure' he was under) and yet, even with that, nearly a decade later, she still encounters people who feel the 'need' to sing his praises to her and say they hope someday she can put her 'issues' behind her. Her 'issues.' Had she been assaulted by a stranger would the same 'caring' people stop to wonder when she and the criminal could be in the same room together? No.

Here's the thing, if [terrorist] had beat a woman he wasn't involved with even once the way he regularly beat Tina, his ass would have been hauled off to jail and it's doubtful that people would be writing "Poor [terrorist]" pieces today. But because it was his wife (or 'wife'), we're supposed to allow for something. What, we're not sure. But there's a lot of minimizing going on about the fact that he 'only' beat his wife. (And for the record, he also beat many of his mistresses. Ann Thomas is only one of the many women who've gone on record explaining how [terrorist] also beat them.) As if it's somehow 'different' if the woman you physically attack is your wife. Almost as if they're saying, she probably asked for it.

The American Bar Association's Commission on Domestic Violence notes that 1.3 million women "are physically assaulted by an intimate partner" each year in the US. That's nothing to minimize.

Tina survived. Nothing could take the abuse or the memories away. She was terrorized and she suffered throughout her life as a result. It's nothing to be minimized or excused. Or glamorized by two idiots in music who felt their own boring lives needed dressing up.

Tina couldn't change what she'd endured but she could -- and did -- make the rest of her years matter.

In 1984, she returned to the charts with her PRIVATE DANCER album (ten million copies sold around the world) which included the hits "Better Be Good To Me," "Let's Stay Together," "Show Some Respect" and the number one hit "What's Love Got To Do With It." She'd start touring for the album as Lionel Richie's opening act but quickly go out on her own and rock the whole world. She'd have one achievement after another. Many more hits, many more record topping concert tours.

She'd also find lasting and real love with Erwin Bach. She would detail their nearly forty years together in her 2018 book MY LOVE STORY: A MEMOIR. ESSENCE writes about their love affair and offers a photo essay. Alex Ross (PEOPLE) notes:

The music legend — who died at age 83 on Wednesday after a "long illness," her rep confirmed — opened up about her romance with Bach, now 67, in her 2021 HBO documentary Tina.

"He was [16 years] younger [than me]. He was 30 years old at the time and had the prettiest face. I mean, you cannot [describe] it. It was like insane. [I thought], 'Where did he come from?' He was really so good-looking. My heart [was beating fast] and it means that a soul has met, and my hands were shaking," Turner recalled in the film.

"We met at Cologne [Bonn] Airport — actually it was Düsseldorf Airport [in Germany], and her manager Roger [Davies] asked me to pick up Tina," added Bach, a former music executive, in the documentary," Bach said in the documentary.

THE GUARDIAN offers their pick of her ten greatest songs, Australia's ABC offers their pick of five greats, ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK serves up their ten choices and BILLBOARD goes with 15. In 1994, a three disc retrospective contained 48 tracks and even it couldn't represent all her greatest songs -- not even all her greatest up to 1994. 1986's "One Of The Living," for example, wasn't on the box set. The song co-written by Holly Knight (who also co-wrote Tina's "Better Be Good To Me" and "The Best") made it to number 15 on the pop charts.

As the Iraq War dragged on and on -- and continues to -- it became a song we'd note here many times. "You can't stop the pain of your children crying out in your head/ We always said that the living would envy the dead."

Tina's passing is the news. Someone else thought he'd be the news but it's Tina Turner that the world is thinking of. In "Tina" last night, we noted those commenting on her passing -- that included Diana Ross, Jennifer Hudson, Ringo Starr, Keith Urban, Dionne Warwick, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. It's a passing that touches the world, a loss that many of us feel.

Last month, Roseanne Greenstreet interviewed Tina for THE GUARDIAN:

How would you like to be remembered?

As the Queen of Rock’n’Roll. As a woman who showed other women that it is OK to strive for success on their own terms.

The following sites updated: