March 22, 2004
Oops! She Did It Again! Courtney Love Knees Press Photographer at 2nd New York Show!

It wasn't enough that Courtney Love flashed her breasts on the Late Night with David Letterman show Wednesday or at a Wendy's restaurant in New York's Union Square (where she allowed a restaurant patron to suckle her right teat--and posed for a photo doing so) or that she allegedly used a microphone stand to assault a fan and got arrested for it. Noooooooooo!
Courtney Love had to get physcial yet again during a concert performance, this time at her Bowery Ballroom show late Thursday night. The gig was her second in New York in as many nights and part of her club tour to promote the release of her new solo album, "America's Sweetheart" (pictured above, right).
According to a Fox News report by Roger Friedman that appeared online Friday with an Associated Press photo of Love in concert at the Bowery Ballroom (see above, left), Love allegedly hurt a New York Daily News photographer while attempting to crowd surf the audience at Thursday's sold-out show. According to Friedman...
"That's when the trouble started. Somewhere in her cross-room body surf, Love fell onto New York Daily News photographer Dara Kushner, and fell hard. Kushner, a petite brunette, got kneed in the neck so badly she had to be taken from the club by paramedics to a local hospital. Before she left, Kushner was questioned by police to see if a crime had been committed, if Love had hit her intentionally."
Air Massive is naturally a bit suspicious when the alleged victim is a member of the ravenous media (uh, unlike ourselves, obviously), and especially the photo press. In part because, well, accidents happen and people get bumped and elbowed and unintentionally bashed at standing-room-only hardcore rock shows all the time, especially when there's crowd-surfing involved.
However passé the grunge-era indie rock ritual is, people still crowd-surf, and when they do so it's not always comfortable for those being surfed upon. It would be easy to conclude that what happened to Kushner is what happens to lots of concert-goers at these type of gigs and that what happened was accidental.
On the other hand, we're talking about Courtney Love--We mean, HELLO, PEOPLE! Can you say "lighting rod"?
As Fox News suggested, the incident may have been intentional, an effort on Love's part to lash out angrily at a member of the media who was in the rock star's face taking pictures, and as such, an easy target. Or maybe this was just Love getting some more publicity. In which case, flashing her breasts on TV seems more effective (you know.... TV... REACH... the masses... that sort of thing).
But if it was just anger, why attack the messenger, the conduit to such publicity? And what was wrong with Kushner taking a photo of Love in the first place?
After all, Kushner was covering a live public concert by (1) a celebrity who had (2) just taunted the U.S. Federal Communications Commision on national television by baring her breasts and (3) had a brush with the law that resulted in arrest and an overnight stay in jail, which was certainly a newsworthy event in and of itself, in turn making Love an even more timely news subject.
It wasn't like Kushner was a rabid papparazzo invading Love's privacy and surreptitiously trying to snap photos for a trashy Euro-tabloid.
Whatever the real motives or actual circumstances, accidental or not, as Friedman pointed out, Kushner's injuries required medical attention to the extent that paramedics were called to the scene and she was taken to a hospital.
But just think about the frenzied follow-up media-coverage-supernova that would explode had she bared her breasts AND allowed them to be suckled WHILE simultaneously crowd-surfing AND assaulting a photographer.
Now imagine if it was televised live! And imagine it was during the intermission to one of the world's most watched annual sporting events! Hey, that sounds familiar.
Well, OK, OK, so we all know that's not going to happen again now that the 10-second broadcast delay is par for the course. Yes, the media certainly has its priorities straight. (Reassuring, isn't it?)
Courtney Love had the world wanting to catch a glimpse of her breasts. Now she's got the world waiting for her next moment of Courtney-just-being-Courtney wackiness.
The America's Sweetheart tour has only just begun. Imagine what Courtney Love's state of mind will be like after months on the road under the oppressive grind of day-in-day-out touring. That's right... stay tuned because the best fireworks may be yet to come.
--Da Smitho + Grand Central Playstation
RELATED LINKS
+ Photo: Courtney Love & Breast Suckled at NY Wendy's [Fleshbot]
+ Courtney in Trouble With the Law Again? [Fox News]
+ Showoff Courtney Bares Up for Dave [NY Post]
+ NY Police Arrest Courtney Love on Assault Charge [Reuters]
+ Courtney Love Official Website
+ Hole / Courtney Love Bio [MTV]
+ Courtney Love Filmography [iMDB]
Posted by at March 22, 2004 03:16 AM










