The Musical Performances at the Biden Inauguration Highlight America's Bankrupt Culture

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Big music stars performed to ring in Joe Biden’s presidency, but they were just as unoriginal and underwhelming as he is.

In a grand ceremony worthy of a dementia-addled aristocrat, geriatric Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States yesterday.

America has had an inauguration for the president every four years since 1789, making yesterday’s event the 59th in U.S. history. I believe Joe Biden is the only man to have attended every single one of them.

Four years ago, Trump’s low rent inauguration celebration featured Toby Keith, Three Doors Down and Lee Greenwood, which wasn’t a murderer’s row of talent so much as a ‘makes-you-want-to-kill-yourself’ lack of it.

I think we can all agree the last thing this country ever needs to see again is Lee Greenwood serenading the masses with his flag fornicating hit from the Paleolithic era, “God Bless the U.S.A.”, a heinously malignant earworm that makes me not just ashamed to be an American, but a sentient human being.

Not surprisingly, the stars came out in full this year to salute Joe Biden, who had considerably more star power on-hand to ring him into office than Trump in 2017.

Case in point, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the swearing-in ceremony. The glorious Gaga, who has the voice of an angel and a face made for radio, arrived looking like she just came off The Hunger Games set. Her dress appeared to be a tribute to a venereal disease polyp designed by Oscar de la Herpes.

Gaga gave her all…but the problem was that it was just way too much. Her heartfelt performance quickly devolved into an overwrought vocal spectacle that looked and sounded like a drag queen Brunhilde wrestling an amusement park Bugs Bunny.

A short while later Jennifer Lopez strutted out to sing “This Land is Your Land” and “America the Beautiful”. If you needed any more proof that America was a vast cultural wasteland, just consider that Jennifer Lopez is now the Woody Guthrie of our era.

J-Lo also gave her all but unfortunately it wasn’t nearly enough. Unable to utilize her most valuable ‘asset’, Ms. Lopez’s lack of vocal prowess was left as exposed as her backside was covered.

Biden loved the performance though and as J-Lo walked past he quickly smelled her hair and declared, “I Love you, Charo!”

The final performer at the ceremony was Garth Brooks, who kept it country…Walmart country, by wearing jeans that were two sizes too small, a belt buckle the size of a Ford F-150 pick-up truck, a black blazer and a shirt with no tie.

Good old boy Garth sang “Amazing Grace” in his usual banal country twang and proceeded to remind viewers that only in America can a minimally gifted, chubby, cowboy poseur become a chart-topping music mega-star.

Biden was deeply moved by Garth’s song and proclaimed he was “so proud that Gene Autry could be here today at my First Communion.”

Later that night the heavy hitters came out for a made-for-tv inaugural celebration titled ”Celebrating America”.

The show opened with Bruce Springsteen doing an acoustic version of his song “Land of Hopes and Dreams” at the Lincoln Memorial. For nearly fifty years Springsteen has been the genuine voice of working class America and is such a national treasure he should be named poet laureate emeritus. His performance was solemn, soulful and stirring and perfectly encapsulated this dire yet determined moment in American history.

The show went precipitously downhill from there.

Tom Hanks, America’s everyman if everyman were a sanctimonious, self-satisfied, holier-than-thou billionaire, was the master of ceremonies.

Hanks was the perfect choice since his filmography looks like a greatest hits of Pentagon and Intelligence community propaganda, as his film’s routinely sell flag-waving revisionist history and muscular American militarism, imperialism and corporate colonialism all under the guise of honor and duty-bound niceness…just like Joe Biden.

Hanks turned the smug all the way up to 11, maybe in an attempt to stay warm, and did his best to reassure his “friends and neighbors” that all was well and life is now back to normal thanks to Biden.

The highlights of Celebrating America were easily the aforementioned Springsteen as well as the Foo Fighters – who played a striking rendition of “Times Like These”.

The lowest of lowlights was Jon Bon Jovi lip-syncing to his cover of The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun”. Bon Jovi’s performance was as odious as the rancid air in Elizabeth, NJ along the turnpike. Jovi’s nasally vocals were so abysmally, egregiously, hellaciously awful it was utterly astonishing. The fact that he was lip-syncing only made it all the more embarrassing.

Lip-syncing dominated the festivities, with Ant Clemons and Justin Timberlake, Tyler Hubbard and Tim McGraw, Demi Lovato, Katy Perry and maybe even John Legend, who Biden thought was his old friend Corn Pop from the mean streets of Wilmington, all lip-syncing or being greatly electronically aided in their vocal efforts.

Lip-syncing does make sense in this context though since the contrived performances perfectly encapsulate the charade that is our corporate-controlled democracy.

Speaking of charlatans, presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama appeared on the show, apparently from The Hall of War Criminals. They each said that despite their political differences that they were able to come together and kill people across the globe and crush the working class…and we should do the same now in the name of unity. Yay unity!!

If the inauguration ceremony and ‘Celebrating America’ - with all its insipid, manufactured performances and star-spangled sappiness honoring our elderly president who’s only capable of muttering or shouting incoherent inanities - are any indication, we are an artistically, intellectually and politically bankrupt nation…and we are truly doomed.

My solution….Springsteen/Grohl 2024!!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Super Bowl Halftime Shitstravaganza

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 52 seconds

Last night Patrick Mahomes led the Kansas City Chiefs on a furious fourth quarter comeback to beat the San Francisco 49ers in an electrifying Super Bowl. Much to my surprise, after scanning the headlines regarding the game, it wasn’t Mahomes’ heroics that were garnering the most praise, but rather it was halftime performer Jennifer Lopez who was declared the real “winner” of the Super Bowl for her astonishing halftime performance.

The reality is that these contrived articles celebrating J-Lo’s astoundingly genius halftime performance were essentially written before her performance ever happened as part of the press tidal wave created by the PR machine that handles all publicity around these type of events and this level of celebrity. One need look no farther than the comments section below these gushing articles to find the unvarnished truth…J-Lo’s halftime show was not universally praised…in fact it was pretty harshly panned by an overwhelming majority of people. This opinion was in line with my own and with that of every single person I spoke with about the performance.

My thoughts on the Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira are thus…it was a perfect representation of the depraved inanity of modern America. The show was a mix of tawdry titillation and woke posturing combined with a complete and total lack of any and all integrity. It wasn’t so much cheap entertainment as an insipid imitation of cheap entertainment.

The two extremely thirsty, scantily clad, middle-aged stars, J-Lo and Shakira, did nothing but pose and preen like cheap tarts at a red light street for the entirety of the show because they had no other options. Since their catalogue of songs are not well-known or remembered, and their singing voices are not of high quality (or are technologically enhanced in the studio), the only way they could muster any attention was by pole dancing and gyrating like they are substitute “dancers” working the graveyard shift at a third rate strip club.

Shakira is certainly a beautiful women, and J-Lo, no slouch in the looks department either, looked like an absolute cow next to her, but the attractiveness of the participants did not distract from the vacuity of the contrived performance. No one on the stage actually sang or played an instrument, just lip-synced to a soundtrack…even the dipshit rappers were faking it. Poor Shakira was even reduced to miming the playing of a guitar at one point (even though she can actually play!). There were also a bevy of background dancers who held instruments but didn’t have the foggiest notion of how to play them only how to badly pretend to play them. It was all cringe-worthy for its blatant charlatanry and stylized mendacity.

The requisite genuflecting to woke ideology, this time in the form of a “Born in the U.S.A.” snippet to celebrate immigration, was just as much a piece of duplicitous and disingenuous corporate bullshittery as the lip-syncing and faux instrument playing. The NFL, the same league that has black balled Colin Kaepernick, and does the equivalent of J-Lo’s lip-sync when it comes to concussions and player safety, and says it doesn’t want to be political and yet acts as a flagrant propagandist for American empire and militarism, does not care about people…be they immigrants or natives…they only care about money.

The media fawning over Jennifer Lopez has been going on a lot recently and is utterly baffling. Jennifer Lopez has never been particularly good at anything she has ever done…she certainly isn’t a great actress and has never been a great singer. J-Lo has recently become a sort of Cher type of character, someone who dresses and behaves overtly sexual in a way that feels entirely and uncomfortably inappropriate, especially considering her age. That is not to say that middle-aged women can’t be sexy, they most certainly can and many I know personally (very personally - *wink-wink*) most definitely are, but J-Lo’s expression of her sexuality is self-delusional and classless to the point of discomfort, most notably because it is devoid of even the least bit of dignity.

At this point the only thing that is truly notable about J-Lo at this point in her shameless career is her unadulterated and ever expanding narcissism. For this reason, she and that repulsively fraudulent poseur fiance of hers, A-Rod, are a match made in heaven or hell, depending on your perspective.

The bottom line is that the Super Bowl halftime show, like America, has devolved to become nothing more than an absurdist parody of itself. The entire performance was nothing but empty spectacle for empty spectacle’s sake. That shit show of halftime yesterday would have been right at home at Trump’s gaudy Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, or his gauche White House in Washington D.C. The media celebration of J-Lo over her allegedly “transcendent” harlot, trollop and strumpet-esque lip-syncing performance, is just as fawning, phony and deluded as Fox News’ delirious coverage of their God-emperor Trump.

J-Lo’s insipid halftime show, and the Super Bowl itself - along with its accompanying endless array of advertisements that idiots lap up like they are dung beetles at a feces festival, are a perfect encapsulation of the bread and circuses stage of decay American empire currently finds itself in. We have a Nero on the throne, eunuchs and whores in the Senate, traitors, liars and fools in the press, and a public that is ever more insatiable for mindless distractions while their corporate overlords exploit and fleece them for everything they’ve got.

But on the bright side…at least it was a good game.

©2020

The Tedious Woke Outrage Over Oscar Nominations

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

The Oscar Nominations came out on Monday morning and the usual woke suspects were outraged by the lack of minorities and women in key categories.

You can set your watch by the emotionalist bitching and moaning of the identity politics crowd come awards season and so I fully expected to be confronted by a cavalcade of absurd hot takes from the woke media bemoaning the racism and misogyny of the Academy Awards when I awoke this morning. I was not disappointed.

The first headline I saw declared “Oscars Nominations Lack Diversity”, and other articles decried black actress Lupita Nyongo’s lack of a nomination as “horrifying”, and deemed the absence of recognition for female directors, among them Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang, as well as minority actors Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez and Awkwafina as being a result of “snubs”.

As is evidenced by this current Academy Award furor, outrage is the nectar of the gods for the woke contingent, and they fuel themselves and their self-righteousness on its intoxicating nature. Proof of this was found last year when every acting category at the Oscars was won by an actor of color, which should have made the woke happy…but instead the main storyline surrounding the event was that Green Book, a movie deemed “racist” because it depicted racism in America through the perspective of a white character, had won Best Picture.

I must admit that there is nothing so delightful as the vacuous and self-righteous over-reaction of the woke to entertainment award nominations and wins. Ever since the #OscarsSoWhite movement came to the forefront in 2016, you can always count on the identity politics adherents come awards season to make an emotional mountain out of the lack of diversity and inclusion molehill.

In regards to the current woke hysteria, here are some facts to remember. Contrary to the headline mentioned above, the 2020 Oscars did not shut out all diversity. Black actress Cynthia Erivo and Latino actor Antonio Banderas are nominated in the main acting categories, and Korean director Bong Joon Ho and his terrific film Parasite, is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

As for the female directors and minority actors left out of nominations…who exactly is deserving and who should they replace on the current list? This is why I find the woke media outrage over the Oscar nominations so disingenuous as they say all of these minority and female artists should be nominated but never mention what white/male artist isn’t deserving of their nomination. 

Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), and Lorena Scafaria (Hustlers) are often named as female directors who should be nominated…but this seems more like a list of female directors who have made a movie this year, and not a list of female directors who have made a good movie this year. No one but a cinematic cretin and philistine would consider these films, except for Little Women, even remotely serious Oscar contenders. And while critics love Greta Gerwig, Little Women is an umpteenth remake of Louisa May Alcott’s iconic story…not exactly breaking new cinematic ground.

As for the acting categories, does anyone really want to hang their hat on Oscar racism on Jennifer Lopez and Awkwafina not being nominated?

And if the Oscars are racist now for “snubbing” Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy with no nominations, were they racist when they actually gave a Best Actor award to Jamie Foxx in 2004 for Ray, or nominated Eddie Murphy in 2006 for Dreamgirls?

This is why I find the woke media outrage over the Oscar nominations so vapid as it is nothing but emotionalist idiocy that is allergic to context.  

For instance, you wouldn’t know it by listening to the woke media, but if you take a look at the Oscar acting categories since the year 2000, you will find that black artists have won awards at a higher percentage than their population in the U.S. and the Anglosphere (nations with English as a primary language – U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia). Since the turn of the century black artists have won the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor award 15% of the time and the Best Supporting Actress award 30% of the time, which is higher than both the percentage of the black population in the U.S., 13%, and in the Anglosphere, roughly 9%.

The perception that black artists are under represented in Oscar acting wins is false, at least since the year 2000, but that sort of fact does not ignite the fury that the woke so crave and is therefore ignored.

Another ignored fact is that while there is a paucity of Best Director nominations for female directors, the category is truly a cornucopia for ethnic diversity. In the last 7 years the best Director award has gone to Mexican artists 5 times, an Asian artist once and a white American once.

Look, the Academy Awards are little more than a self-serving orgy of narcissism that never fails to fail. Anyone who takes them seriously is asking to be irritated or aggravated in one way or another. For example, I am sure that I will throw something at my television when 1917 wins Best Picture this year. But with that said, the woke turning the Oscars into little more than the diversity and inclusion Olympics will do nothing but further reduce the quality and artistry of cinema, and that is a cultural crime of epic proportions.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020