March/April 2014

Dancing With the Tsars: A Gossip Column Dedicated to Celebrities Who Perform for Dictators

Gossip and glitz from the glamorous world of entertaining the world’s autocrats!

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Totalitarian Request Live

In January, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman went back to North Korea to chill with his “awesome” basketball-loving, uncle-purging pal Kim Jong Un. He even sang “Happy Birthday” to his brotalitarian buddy…Under Siege star Steven Seagal has been hanging out with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and supports his buddy’s annexation of Crimea. This bromance runs deep; in 2011, the Hollywood martial-artist asked Putin to support Russian immortality and artificial body research…Jennifer Lopez reportedly snagged $1.5 million to sing at a bash attended by Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (mind if we call you G-Berdy?), the dictator of Turkmenistan, last June…In October, Julio Iglesias sang at a gig put together by the son of the mysteriously wealthy president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang. With the cheapest seats going for nearly $1,000, fans had to beg, borrow, or steal from the state treasury to get in…Imma let you finish, but Kanye West had the best concert for a dictator’s progeny last year. In August, he rocked the wedding reception of the grandson of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. $3 million is gonna buy a lot of damn croissants…

Eavesdropping

“The concert was organized by the president’s daughter and I believe sponsored by UNICEF.”

—Sting, stung by reports that he’d taken more than $1 million to sing at a 2010 concert for the daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, whose police are known for watching every move you make. (Shrugging off the free PR, unicef said it had nothing to do with the event.)

“By going there, I played MUSIC for the Chechenyan [sic] people. I’m a MUSICIAN and would appreciate if you leave me out of your politics.”

—Seal, tweeting after he performed at Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday bash in 2011. Also in line for party favors at the bash: Jean-Claude Van Damme and Hilary Swank.

Autocratic for the People

While Moammar Qaddafi was busy with one-party rule, his family’s parties ruled! Among the crooners who sang for the Qaddafi kids over the years: Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Enrique Iglesias, Nelly Furtado, and Usher. And don’t forget Beyoncé, who reportedly got $2 million for a Caribbean gig thrown by the Libyan strongman’s son Hannibal in 2010. Daddy Qaddafi himself partied all night long with Lionel Richie in 2006.

From the Memory Hole

The King of Pop wasn’t above entertaining lesser royalty. In 1996, the Sultan of Brunei paid Michael Jackson $17 million to moonwalk at his 50th birthday gala. More than a decade later, the gloved one sought a vacay from paparazzi and lawyers in Bahrain, only to be sued for $7 million by his host, Prince Abdullah al-Khalifa, for allegedly bailing on a deal to record an album for the royal record label…And who could forget when James Brown headlined the concert thrown as part of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman bout put on by Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko? As Etta James later dished about her host, the hardest working dictator in sub-Saharan Africa, “This mother was off the wall.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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