Bette's Busted Tour
I like Bette Midler, always have. She's one of those feisty, outspoken, smart-aleck chicks I've always viewed as a challenge as well as pure entertainment. You can just feel the life they've lived and the unspoken, well, sometimes spoken taunt, "Can you keep up with me honey?"
When the mask slips though it can be such a disappointment. I read today that she's decided, Bette that is, to quit touring to help save the planet. It seems she took a look out the back window of the bus and found there were too many trucks full of her stuff following to support the show. "Fourteen trucks. That's a lot of gas," says she.
So she's going to take a gig in Vegas and let the fans come to her. I don't know, maybe some math wiz can do the numbers but, isn't getting one person to an arena filled with a few thousand other people slightly cheaper and easier on the planet than getting those few thousand people to Vegas, even if that one person would have used fourteen trucks?
For one thing, Vegas is in the middle of the desert and unless you're coming from a population center in California and have the time to drive out (in your Prius, of course) you're going to take a plane to get there. That's just the blazingly obvious part but a host of other economic considerations come into it, not the least being Bette has decided the thirteen million bucks she'll earn per year will be sufficient to live on. Here's just one.
So Bette and the casino (whichever one it will be) have done the math and found the answer to be good, but what of the math for her fans? That answer would be of the 'let them eat cake' variety. Let's say you live in Kansas City with a spouse and couple of tax deductions. Bette is coming to town so you get a baby sitter for the night and blow some of that money you've been saving for the new plasma. What the heck? Once in a lifetime and all that. You can still bring the family to the lake for vacation.
You can do your own math about going to Vegas. Forget the plasma, forget the lake and forget the new school clothes. Multiply that by even a small number of fans. The better off fans will still be going to the lake that year so Ms. Midler's planet-saving scheme has just been dumped down her ultra low flush toilet.
I've got nothing against Vegas. I love Vegas. It's fun and flashy and is the ultimate iconic American expression of excess and decadence. They never turn the lights off and the air conditioning never stops. I think Bette Midler and Vegas belong together. And as long as we have Vegas and Bette Midler together crushing some poor desert tortoise atwixt their collective foot and carbon footprint there is hope for America. I just wish these entertainers could keep their feet out of their mouths.
