I’m starting to think there’s much less here than meets the eye. Defamer cites an interview with an actual concert attendee, and it sounds far more believable than what I’m hearing over at Fox News and in the blogosphere.

My wife & I were at the Linda Ronstadt performance in question, at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, and quite frankly, Aladdin President Bill Timmins’ account of what happened is complete crap. There was mixed booing and cheering at Ronstadt’s pro-Michael Moore comment, and that was about the extent of the “bedlam” that supposedly broke out.

I saw no posters being torn down or cocktails being thrown in the air, and if people stomped out of the theatre unhappy, it was because 1) that was the last song Ronstadt performed; it was her encore; and 2) she mainly sang her standards repertoire, with the Nelson Riddle orchestrations, and a large part of the crowd wanted to hear more of her rock-‘n’-roll stuff; she got the biggest round of applause for doing a lackadaisical run-through of her version of “Blue Bayou.”

Frankly, my suspicion is that Timmins is way overdramatizing what happened, in order to justify giving Ronstadt the boot. It simply wasn’t that big a deal.

Think about it: Lots of people have endorsed the movie, rightly or wrongly. Have there been riots? Ronstadt has done this at many other performances without a single problem. If there were detractors in the audience, there had to have been some supporters as well. The account of bedlam and property damage is simply overblown and unbelievable.