Celebrities Toe the Line—or Else?

As reported by The Daily Beast, Jennifer Holliday Pulls Out of Trump Inauguration, Apologizes to LGBT Community:

On Saturday morning Jennifer Holliday released a letter addressed to the LGBT community announcing that she will no longer be performing at the inauguration concert, apologizing for what she called a “lapse of judgment.” She cites this article in her letter, saying that after she read it she realized that “my only choice must now be to stand with the LGBT Community and to state unequivocally that I WILL NOT PERFORM FOR THE WELCOME CONCERT OR FOR ANY OF THE INAUGURATION FESTIVITIES!”

[Added: The issue isn’t whether Holliday will or won’t perform as she sees fit, but that there is a new McCarthyism of the left afoot, where celebrities have been warned that “legitimatizing” the Trump presidency by performing at the inauguration or at future White House-related cultural events will put them on a new black list because the administration is—in this case—allegedly anti-gay.]

LGBT progressives and Democrats have advanced the false narrative that Trump is anti-gay, when—despite his other failings—he was easily the most gay-accepting GOP president nominee ever, as I discussed in an earlier post. And so a day that should unite Americans of goodwill despite political differences becomes a day that divides and provokes yet more partisan polarization.

More evidence of LGBT progressives’ disconnect from, well, reality. Challenging the dominant liberal-left narrative, historian John Gordon Steele writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Trump May Herald a New Political Order:

To bring permanent change, Mr. Trump needs policies that succeed on the ground, not merely in theory. Faster growth and rising incomes are always rewarded at the ballot box. …

But continued outreach to minority communities is also crucial. Mr. Trump has promised to address the problems of inner cities, which he accuses the Democrats of ignoring for decades. And at one rally last fall, he was handed a rainbow flag, a symbol of gay rights. He smiled broadly and held it aloft as the audience cheered.

This is not your father’s Republican Party.

WAMU, the NPR station in the nation’s capital, recently featured an interview with entrepreneur Jeff Giesea. As noted on the station’s website (which links to the interview):

Jeff Giesea says he isn’t what most people expect a Trump supporter to be—he’s a gay, Stanford-educated resident of a city Hillary Clinton carried by over 90 percent. But Giesea says broad stereotypes are part of the problem with modern politics, where common ground is often hard to find.

You think?

More. Opera star Andrea Bocelli backs out of Trump inauguration because of death threats. As Twitchy noted, “Tolerant Left Strikes Again!”

Furthermore. Jennifer Holliday told the cast of “The View” that death threats forced her to cancel her performance during the inauguration:

I was receiving death threats at this point. I was receiving death threats from black people, the N-word from black people. They were saying they were going to kill me.” …

“At first I said, ‘Are these white people just messing with me? I’m going, ‘Oh my God, these are black people calling me this. They were saying I should kill myself.”

23 Comments for “Celebrities Toe the Line—or Else?”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    You think?

    I think that it is interesting that conservatives praise the free market until the market works against them.

    Any number of entertainers have declined to perform at inaugural celebrations of one sort any another because performing wouldn’t sit well with their fan base. Not my monkeys, not my circus, but I don’t see why entertainers can’t respond to the market like any other business.

    This is not your father’s Republican Party.

    A quiet reminder that results are what count, and we have no idea what the Trump administration will do with respect to LGBT issues.

    But no, you are right. My father’s (1912-1997) Republican Party was right of center, but not, on the whole, outside the center. For most of my father’s lifetime, moderate Republicans predominated in the party. I don’t think we can say that now.

    • posted by Throbert McGee on

      I think that it is interesting that conservatives praise the free market until the market works against them.

      What’s even more interesting is your belief that conservative praise for the free market, and respect for the right of people to “vote with their wallets,” means never saying “Golly, some consumers make silly choices.”

      Jennifer Holliday shrewdly perceived that a certain percentage of her LGBT fans share a delusional hive-mind and would be quick to boycott Ms. Holliday if she performed at the Inauguration of a man who’s not on record as being particularly anti-LGBT, but Hitlerhitlerhitler electroshock lgbt youth crying self to sleep fascist hitler putin ggggnaaaarff hitler.

      So Holliday’s decision was probably a wise move — though one is troubled by her lack of love for heterosexual fans who also happen to be foaming-at-the-mouth progressives. Does their pain not count, too?

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      I also think that the conservative penchant for reverting to Hitler ad hominem attacks is interesting.

      • posted by Throbert McGee on

        I also think that the conservative penchant for reverting to Hitler ad hominem attacks is interesting.

        Okay, strictly speaking, it wasn’t a “Hitler ad hominem”; it was a “Godwin ad hominem.”

        That said, I considered accusing the left of being quasi-theocrats who see Trump not as a mere Hitler, but as the Beast who lives at 666 Antichrist Blvd. But I thought that might be over the top.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Yada, yada, yada. I suspect that Republican-aligned “libertarians” are going to be treated to a real wake-up call during the Trump administration, not that they won’t be so busy trashing left/liberal/progressive gays and lesbians for not supporting Trump to notice.

    • posted by R.W.Alexander on

      The President Elect’s record on gay civil rights is perhaps marginally better than his civil rights record as a whole: but his Attorney General pick, Jeff Beauregard Sessions, has a strong record of opposition to GLBT rights.
      If bakeries may discriminate on who they want to do business with, than certainly entertainers have a similar right.

    • posted by TJ on

      I recall during the Bush administration, quite a few folks on the political right loved to silence political opposition.

      When one member of the Dixie Chicks publicly criticised tu

      • posted by TJ on

        …the president. The entire trio was treated as social pariahs.

        In that case, I suspect that a good number of conservatives didnt have a problem with telling celebrities to toe the party line.

        Again, I have sooo little interest in celebrities personal life or political views.

  2. posted by Houndentenor on

    Trump probably isn’t all that anti-gay. He doesn’t have to. Almost everyone of his appointments is openly and unapologetically anti-gay. He’s delegated that task to multiple departments. It’s telling the Stephen is focused on who will perform at the inauguration and not on the policies likely to come from very anti-gay cabinet appointments and a very anti-gay Congress. But that might require being honest with himself about how anti-gay the GOP actually is, and we all know that isn’t about to happen.

  3. posted by Jorge on

    I have a fairly strong memory of the media coverage of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s press conference announcing in passionate terms his office’s prosecution of a double murder of a lesbian couple. Given his reputation as very, very conservative, it caught my attention and made quite an impression. I later found out that the criminal case was dismissed. (If the politics had been different, would he have been condemned for violating the civil rights of an upstanding citizen?)

    So I have faith in the future. I just don’t know who will benefit. But I am reminded that that’s okay because the LGBT community doesn’t just care about themselves, we care about Americans from all backgrounds.

    Yahooey! LGBT-superscript S for Sessions! (Maybe if you read LGBTs while you turn your head upside down?)

  4. posted by Lori Heine on

    Entertainment is a business. Political speech or activity of any kind exposes actors, musicians or athletes to risk. Unless they’re deeply committed to a particular politician, they’d be crazy to climb out onto that sort of a limb.

    My brother-in-law was a nominee at this year’s Golden Globes. He rarely says a word in public about politics. Except for child hunger, he’s pretty silent about most issues. His father–also an actor–was nearly destroyed by the McCarthy witch hunt in the Fifties. He’s learned the necessary lessons well.

    Frankly, conservatives sound like idiots when they babble about “Hollywood liberals” and said entertainers’ political views. Everyone has a right to an opinion–even actors and musicians, who work damned hard for the money they make and pay huge buttloads in taxes.

    Conservatives would be a little more credible about not caring what entertainers think if they didn’t gratefully slobber all over themselves every time somebody like Chuck Norris or Sly Stallone opens his mouth and says something they agree with.

    • posted by TJ on

      We have already had Ben Carson give the standard no “special rights” for them gays (said as “extra rights”).

    • posted by TJ on

      If a celebrity has a mostly conservative fanbase, they will probably perform\attend and it wont hurt their career….or they are associated with a conservative character (Tony Stark as an example) . The trick is when the celebrity wants to have a broader, more diverse fanbase.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      For about a decade I worked on Wall St as a contractor in between singing gigs. I lost count of the number of times I had to bite my tongue while people were telling “Hillary is so ugly” type jokes. But I did it because I needed the gig. As a result I feel no sympathy for conservatives working in situations where most people are liberals. At least as many liberals are working at jobs where almost everyone is conservative.

      And you are right about politics and other controversial topics and people in public. It is a risk and one many are smart not to take. I think it’s funny that people squawking now over a gospel singer being uninvited from the Ellen show were calling their local radio station to get them to stop playing the Dixie Chicks. People do have a right to express their own opinions, but they are not free from the consequences.

  5. posted by TJ on

    I dont pay much attention to what hoity-toity party a big wig decides to go to, much less when they ar

  6. posted by TJ on

    …Are paid to attend. It aint really important when talking about what the KGB-Backed-President will do, in terms of policy.

  7. posted by Houndentenor on

    A minor note: Andrea Bocelli is not an opera star. He has only appeared in one opera, a production of Werther in Detroit. He is a pop singer who sings opera arias occasionally and has recorded some opera. He is not an opera star and no one involved in producing opera considers him such.

    If he has indeed received death threats then those should be investigated and whoever made those threats should be prosecuted. Of course since we don’t know who made them, smearing all liberals with them is despicable, but typical.

  8. posted by TJ on

    The top complaints about the KGB-Backed President Elect have been business corruption and his pandering to the David Duke crowd.

    His policy views -real or fake – on gay rights got little notice outside the gay press.

  9. posted by TJ on

    Personally, I dont actually have much interest in celebrities’ politics, religion or sexuality.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      What’s odd is that anyone asks them about such things. For most it’s well out of their area of expertise so why do we care about their views more than any random person we meet on the street. Oh right, we live in a celebrity obsessed culture and just elected a reality tv star with zero political experience as president.

  10. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Off topic, but interesting, a look the internal power struggles, shunning and reshaping of the Alt-Right into the Alt-Light, including a commentary on Jeff Gisea:

    This might seem a disorienting new politics and aesthetic for Washington, but the patron behind both events is a figure already in D.C.: Jeff Giesea, a little-known entrepreneur. The 41-year-old Giesea exudes the air of a West Coast investor; on workdays, he haunts the hip environs of Logan Circle, and he asked to meet me at a coffee house off 14th Street that is very much part of blue, Obama-era Washington. Giesea graduated from Stanford in 1997, a year after Rebekah Mercer, though he said he does not know her. He does know fellow Stanford alumnus Thiel, according to a person familiar with their relationship, and Thiel talked him out of attending law school. Instead, Giesea went to work for Thiel Capital Management, the magnate’s pre-PayPal investment venture, and then for Koch Industries’ public affairs office.

    In recent years, Giesea says, he has become less of a libertarian and more concerned with the fortunes of Middle America. He says his travels in Europe and his homosexuality have made him concerned about Islamic incursions in the West. In February, he published a paper titled “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare” in a NATO-sponsored journal, calling for using the tactics of internet trolls to thwart the Islamic State’s online propaganda; the ISIS tactics he studied have informed his own virtual pro-Trump insurgency, which he conducted in conjunction with the likes of Cernovich and Johnson, supplementing the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of anonymous pro-Trump Internet trolls.

    Giesea confers regularly with Cernovich about taking over the Republican Party and remaking it as pro-worker, perhaps with the help of a BuzzFeed-style think tank that distills policy into memes and makes those memes go viral. He views himself as a mentor and moderating force within the Trumpist movement, and acknowledged that it has some growing up to do. “We need to evolve beyond trolling,” he said. The tactic can still be appropriate, but only within certain parameters, he said. “We need to make sure it’s used constructively and ethically.”

    There are other changes in store as well. Giesea is an organizer of DeploraBall, and he invited Yiannopoulos’ involvement in the party. But his young comrade’s vision of shirtless Mexican laborers will not come to pass, and for a very pre-Trump, non-nationalist reason. “I find that offensive,” Giesea said. “My mother is a Mexican citizen.”

    And this snippet about Milo’s DeploraBall:

    Yiannopoulos described his vision for the event: As guests entered the National Press Club, shirtless Mexican laborers would be building a physical wall around them. Instead of doves, Yiannopoulos would release 500 live frogs in honor of Pepe, the cartoon mascot of pro-Donald Trump internet trolls. The room would be lined with oil portraits in gilt frames, each depicting a celebrity who had vowed to leave the country in the event of Trump’s election. At the end of the night, the portraits would be thrown into a bonfire and burned. Yiannopoulos would send a bill for the party to the Mexican Embassy.

    Stephen, you really need to go to the DeploraBall and report.

    Nobody’s done the frog trick since the Exodus. The tassel-loafer LCR cocktail parties will be so passe by comparison.

  11. posted by Jorge on

    Off topic, but interesting, a look the internal power struggles, shunning and reshaping of the Alt-Right into the Alt-Light…

    Hey! Mr. Miller’s namesake is mentioned in the article. I didn’t even know he had a namesake connected to Trump. Or maybe I just forgot.

    I must say it’s interesting to read stories with headlines that catch me off guard and realize I know the hints, not the details. I found this comment by Milo Yiannapoulos interesting just for the timing alone:

    “The small contingent of distasteful people in the alt-right became so territorial about the expression that they scared off moderate right-wingers,” he said. “And that’s what they did to me.”

    I didn’t even know the differences had gotten to the point of being a name issue. Or is it just because Milo says so? I was expecting a split, but I expected the infighting to have more rounds than Richard Spencer and the Deploraball. Hmm, in some ways of counting it’s been three rounds.

    But there are changes brewing in the political establishment, too–of both parties. And the Deploraball has in my mind risen to become a pale competition to the Women’s March in Washington, itself a competitor to the Trump inauguration.

  12. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “The small contingent of distasteful people in the alt-right became so territorial about the expression that they scared off moderate right-wingers,” he said. “And that’s what they did to me.”

    Political movements always expunge everyone with teeth or balls as a trade off for becoming mainstreamed, eventually becoming a coopted domesticized shadow, void of energy or ideas.

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