And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #339: Donald Trump v Ticket Touts

By | Published on Friday 20 January 2017

Donald Trump

As it stands, Donald Trump is already the US president who CMU has reported on more than any other before. And as of this moment, he’s not even president yet. But something about Trump has really got under the skin of musicians and the music community.

Artists have been standing up to denounce him ever since he launched his campaign to become leader of the free world, though numerous music industry organisations have been falling over themselves to write open letters to the President-Elect since his election win making various demands and requests. But up until now, it’s Trump’s inauguration, and the various events surrounding it, which has generated the most amusing stories.

The one I’ve chosen as this week’s Beef Of The Week initially appears to be very much in that latter category. However, it is true that this story doesn’t quite deliver the punch the headline suggests it will. Still, I’m sticking with it for a number of reasons.

For one, a misleading headline that isn’t really backed up by the facts seems wholly appropriate in a world where accusations of “fake news” keep getting thrown around by a pathological liar. Plus the mild tragedy of the actual story here is really a lot more fun than the bold promise of its headline.

On the face of it, the New York Daily News this week appeared to run a story that those pesky ticket touts were struggling to shift tickets for Trump’s swearing in ceremony. Surely, you’d think, all those supporters distrustful of everything they read and all the haters distrustful of everything he stands for would both want to be there to see with their own eyes the man himself being officially made their president. Apparently not. No one wants that at all. Or so suggests the headline.

Touts, hey? Grr, and all that. If there’s one thing we hate more than Trump it’s ticket touts, right? I mean, right? Those bastards, building gold swimming pools full of cash off the back of hardworking musicians, sportspeople and, in this case, soon-to-be-presidents. It’s about time they all got knocked down a peg or two. So hey, here’s a Trump story with a happy ending.

However, for those few of us who actually read the NYDN’s report, it turned out that this story was about just one tout. And an occasional tout at that, rather than someone who makes his living flogging on tickets for profit. Quickly the focus of the beef becomes less touts v Trump, or Trump v touts, but one man locked in a battle with himself. A tussle between bold self-confidence and creeping self-doubt.

Tickets for this event are, in fact, free of charge. However, Yossi Rosenberg, a self-professed “marketing genius, independent short film star and lifelong bachelor” who from time to time resells tickets to make a bit of extra money on the side, did not get any free tickets. Instead, he bought a pair off someone on Craigslist for $700, hoping to double his money.

Immediately he made it known to the world via his Facebook account that he had a pair of these much sought after tickets available. He apparently relisted them on Craigslist too. But no buyers came forth.

“I thought they would be in demand”, Rosenberg told NYDN on Monday. “I got offers before I got them, but then I get them and everybody balked”.

Possibly no one was expecting to be charged $1400 for a pair of tickets originally given out for free. Or maybe our plucky hero just wasn’t looking in the right places.

Keen to at least make his money back, he began listing the tickets on white supremacist websites. Surely racists would want to pay over the odds for them. Racists love Donald Trump. But not these racists, apparently. Perhaps they were poor racists.

At a loss to what to do, he gave it one last shot in the only place that remained: the noticeboard in his office. Amazingly, even that didn’t result in a sale. Although he did eventually get an offer.

“Someone offered me $200 for the pair”, he said. “I guess [Trump’s] approval ratings aren’t that high, right?”

Maybe. Although to be fair, $100 each for some complimentary tickets is still quite a lot. Also, it only takes a small amount of searching online to find tickets for the event at closer to that price – along with official warnings not to hand over money to anyone for them. Had he done more of that searching himself, Rosenberg might not have spent $700 on them in the first place.

Still, the professed Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in November eventually resigned himself to his fate: There is no way he’s going to break even on this sale, and as the event draws ever closer, it seemed less likely that he’ll make any return on it at all. Only one thing for it.

“I never intended on going”, he confirmed, that being the modus operandi of a ticket tout. “I really thought I’d see some profit. If I don’t sell them for what I paid within 72 hours, I’m just going to go”.

Of course, you might smell something slightly fishy about all of this. You probably smell something fishy about all news these days, given that you’ve all been primed to assume that everything is now made up. Still, you’d be right to wonder whether it’s entirely reasonable to take this story at face value.

It has the air of a prank, and stars a man who is no stranger to getting himself in the news under slightly bizarre pretences. If nothing else, Rosenberg has now admitted that he never actually put the tickets for sale on any white supremacist sites. Bad luck, racists.

That said, from his Facebook posts this week, he does appear to have a pair of tickets for the inauguration event, so if you’re really keen to go, he may as yet be your only hope. Although you’d better make him a good offer and quickly, because it does appear that he’s already on his way to Washington, DC.

Whether or not the touting story is true, I really hope he makes it to the ceremony. I’ve invested more in following this story than I ever imagined. I just want to know what he thinks of it. I want someone with a sense of humour to witness what goes on at that event first hand. I want to know if it holds the answer to what actually counts as “typically and traditionally American”. Last night’s pre-inauguration concert didn’t give much clue, despite Kanye West not being asked to appear because he failed to fit those criteria.

Most of all, I want the big reveal here to be – not that a man never actually tried to sell a pair of tickets he in truth got for free – but that Donald Trump never actually won the election. Now that would be a surprise ending I could get into. It would be the greatest trick since David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall Of China. A wall which may yet be dismantled and rebuilt along the border of Mexico next week if these hopes are not fulfilled.



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