PEOPLE
It’s been a rocky road for Dave Grohl.
The Foo Fighters frontman opened up about his hearing loss last week on “The Howard Stern Show.”
“If you were sitting next to me right here at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a f—ing word you were saying to me,” he told Stern on Feb. 15. “That’s the worst thing about this pandemic s—, it’s people wearing masks. I’ve been reading lips for like 20 years, so when someone comes up to me and they’re like (incomprehensible noise), I’m like, ‘I’m a rock musician. I’m f—ing deaf, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
Grohl, 53, has been rocking for well over half his life, first with Nirvana and then with Foo Fighters. He says he hasn’t been to a doctor, but he’s confident they would diagnose him with tinnitus.
Stern questioned why Grohl didn’t wear earpieces like many other musicians, both to help them hear better on stage and to protect their ears.
“I wanna hear the audience in front of me and I want to turn around and be able to hear Taylor (Hawkins) right there and go over here and hear Pat (Smear), and go over here and hear Chris (Shiflett) and stuff like that,” Groh said. “It just messes with your spatial understanding of where you are on stage.”
Grohl has spoken about his hearing loss in the past. In 2011, he told Stern that his left ear was “almost gone.” Ten years later, he told the BBC, “I’m deaf now” and described the ringing in his ears as a long-term problem.
Last Tuesday, he explained to Stern that while he might struggle to hear in a crowded restaurant, his musical ear is still tuned in during recording sessions.
“If I hear something that’s slightly out of tune, or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that in the mix, I can f—ing hear the minutiae of everything that we have done to that song,” Grohl said.
The multi-talented frontman is one of a long line of rock musicians who have chronicled their hearing issues, including Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Eric Clapton, Ozzy Osbourne and Neil Young.
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NEW YORK — Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera vouched for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., after his Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson called the left-wing politico an “entitled rich white lady” on Friday.
“To be clear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a proud woman of color,” Rivera tweeted Tuesday. “To claim otherwise is mere provocation.”
Carlson claimed otherwise on an episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” during a rant about a book on the liberal lawmaker he felt was too flattering.
“There is no place on Earth, outside of American colleges and newsrooms, where Sandy Cortez would be recognized as a ‘woman of color,’ because she’s not,” he falsely claimed. “She’s a rich, entitled white lady. She’s the pampered, obnoxious ski bunny in the matching snowsuit who tells you to pull up your mask while you’re standing in the lift line at Jackson Hole. They’re all the same.”
According to her congressional biography page, Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx to a dad who is a second-generation Bronxite and a mom who is from Puerto Rico. Her parents met in Puerto Rico, according to the 32-year-old progressive, who said her mom learned English after moving to New York City.
AOC addressed Carlson’s remarks on Twitter, using a bit of Spanish.
“This is the type of stuff you say when your name starts with a P and ends with dejo,” she tweeted.
She was referring to the Spanish word “pendejo,” which essential translates to “a—hole or idiot,” according to Dictionary.com. She also called the right-wing conspiracy pundit “trash” in Spanish and “a creep” in English.
Rivera, who frequently bickers with his Fox News colleagues, was born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a Russian Jewish mother.
Ocasio-Cortez told attendees at a 2018 Hanukkah event that her family had been tracing its roots in recent years and learned that “many generations ago” her family tree included Sephardic Jews.” That Jewish group, which numbered around 300,000 according to Haaretz, fled Spain in the 15th century.
Carlson is well-known for espousing rhetoric that’s highly offensive to minority groups.
