After being booed during her Saturday night performance and ejected from the Aladdin hotel and casino, Linda Ronstadt is on the fast track to reverential treatment in the entertainment media. Now that she's been subjected to the cruelties of a Las Vegas crowd -- which typically doesn't travel to the neon oasis to hear odes to filmmaker Michael Moore's patriotism -- it's best not to predict what Ronstadt will have to say about these lumpen Americans. Even before that incident, however, Ronstadt unburdened herself of a few thoughts about America as a whole and the political and spiritual right in particular.

America first: "I saw a movie recently about a camel and these people in Mongolia [our wild guess: The Story of the Weeping Camel], and I relate to them better than people here in this country," she tells George Varga of the San Diego Union-Tribune. "It looks like (Germany's) Weimar Republic to me here."

That's in a sidebar bearing the title "The diva speaks." She's just as prone to non sequiturs in the mainbar: "This is an election year, and I think we're in desperate trouble and it's time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know."

Ronstadt does not explain how she deduces that someone in the audience is a Republican or a "fundamental" Christian. Would true fundamentalists -- who, as we know from various pundits, do not read, are irrational and plan to hasten the end times -- have any interest in hearing Ronstadt sing "You're No Good" or "Heatwave"? If she'd rather not know about their politics or faith, doesn't that mean, at least for Republicans or fundamentalists, it's actually not "time for people to speak up and not pipe down"?