Montclair Literary Festival Cancels Jann Wenner Event
In the wake of saying some incredibly offensive and stupid statements, the Montclair Literary Festival has cancelled its September 28 event with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation. When asked by the New York Times why all of the interview subjects in his new book The Masters were white men, Wenner actually said that as far as female legends of song were concerned, “none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.” Times reporter David Marchese immediately jumped on the gaffe by mentioning Joni Mitchell, one of the more outspoken and brilliant artists ever, and Wenner just kept digging himself into a misogynist hole by answering, “go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni was not a philosopher of rock’n’roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.”
Wenner was just as tone-deaf about Black contributions to understanding rock’n’roll when he said, “they just didn’t articulate at that level.” Then he doubled down on his ignorance by saying, “just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard…”
When it hit the fan, he tried to backtrack by admitting his statements “diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists” and “I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words…and accept the consequences.” One such consequence is his being ousted from The Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, an entity he helped create.
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