Awhile back we told you about the gay Iraqi refugees who used their cache as refugees to pick up dates. Well now we have a heavy metal band, refugees from Iraq, getting VIP treatment and being featured in the New York Times (be sure to check out the photo!).
Acrassicauda had been through hell as a rock band in wartime Baghdad. Its practice space was bombed. Its members were branded Satan worshipers and received death threats for making Western-style music. Then they suffered through two purgatorial years as refugees in Syria and Turkey, killing time and dreaming of rocking out in the land of the free.
And on Sunday night, two days after the last of the band’s four members was resettled in the United States, they enjoyed what any metal fan would have to call heaven: bearhugs and “Wow, dude” heart-to-hearts backstage with Metallica at the Prudential Center in Newark. It probably wasn’t necessary for James Hetfield, Metallica’s lead singer, to surprise them after the show by handing over one of his guitars, a black ESP, and signing it “Welcome to America”; their minds were already blown.
I’m too weary with this story to write more, just go read it. They say they received no special treatment in the resettlement process, yeh right! What about the women and kids they displaced, or the desperate interpreters we have been hearing so much about?
You know, I wouldn’t be so annoyed by stories like this if the mainstream media would say why they were being persecuted, or why the gay guys are persecuted. Islamic fundamentalists persecute them! Why is that so darn hard to say?