Reports: Tila Tequila attack wasn’t exactly spontaneous
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The audience attack on Tila Tequila at the Gathering of the Juggalos in Illinois early Saturday morning may have been far from spontaneous.
There were ‘informal yet openly communicated plans to harm or harass Tila Tequila in some way,’ according to SFGate, which cited tweets from A.V. Club blogger-author Nathan Rabin, who was at the event, as well as posts on an anti-Juggalo website that alleged Insane Clown Posse fans had threatened Miss Tila on her MySpace page and continued to do so after the event.
Among the printable comments quoted by SFGate: ‘Please spare the Juggalos and stay home … you can’t even spell ICP’s name correctly ... you don’t belong there.’ (On Twitter she’d been calling the group the ‘Insane Klown Posse’ and ‘IKP.’)
Rabin has posted a fascinating (albeit profanity-peppered, so be warned) first-person account from the festival, where he was researching a book and was in the audience during Tila’s set.
According to Rabin, turnout at the Gathering of the Juggalos was down from the previous year’s 10th-anniversary festival, and fans he talked to were blaming some of that on the number of mainstream acts that had been booked, diluting the lineup of Psychopathic Records acts at the event.
Said Rabin:
This invites the question: What ... was Tila Tequila doing at the Gathering in the first place? Who couldn’t have seen this train wreck coming from half a hemisphere away? Every Juggalo I spoke to that day seethed with rage and suggested that something very, very bad would happen to Tequila that very night.
Rabin cited ‘exquisitely mixed signals’ -- signals that can’t be reprinted at this blog -- sent out by ICP’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope at an address in a festival tent early Friday night.
In the audience for her set hours later, Rabin noticed what he termed an ‘air of violence’ that to him also seemed ‘fundamentally harmless.’ Bottles were thrown, he said, but they were plastic, and ‘Tequila didn’t seem to be suffering anything worse than surface cuts and bruises.’ Tila then responded to audience catcalls demanding that she show them her you-knows by, well, taking off her top and showing them her you-knows, Rabin said.
It somehow made a sad, surreal spectacle even more horrifying. Tequila was giving the crowd what she thought they wanted, but it still didn’t work.
Tom Green was brought on stage to try to placate the crowd, Rabin said, and security guards kept at least one fan offstage -- but the onslaught allegedly continued, as people chased Tequila to her trailer, then rocked it and broke windows.
If you can handle the language, Rabin’s post is a must read.
Miss Tila has said she intended to file a lawsuit over the attack.
-- Christie D’Zurilla
Related dispatch from the Ministry of Gossip:
Tila Tequila attacked during late-night rap performance
