Actionable Garbage at the Grammys - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Actionable Garbage at the Grammys
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CBS logo on studio wall (Elliott Cowand Jr/Shutterstock.com)

“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
— Romans 1:28

There’s nothing new in the world. Sam Smith and Kim Petras are most certainly no exception.

By now you’ve probably heard about the disgusting — and disgustingly banal — performance of the duo’s anti-Christian song “Unholy” at Sunday night’s Grammys, a spectacle redolent of satanic rituals and cultural arson which in a saner world would call into question the broadcast license of CBS, the network responsible for airing it.

Outrage was the most prevalent response to this — outrage and vexation at the abuse of cosmetic surgery which has produced what’s left of Madonna, who introduced the Smith/Petras bacchanal.

But it does no good to be outraged about the debauch at the Grammys. The spectacle was specifically designed with an intention to generate outrage.

Why? Because outrage is the only avenue left for CBS and the recording industry to generate the public’s attention for the annual self-congratulatory celebration of modern pop music’s mediocrity and decline. Grammy ratings are in the tank, and have been for years.

Just like “pop music” is in the tank and has been for years.

People think there is no good music left. That isn’t true; there is lots of it. You won’t find it on Top 40 radio and the media conglomerates controlling the recording industry won’t promote it, but if you look hard enough you can find many artists producing beautiful songs.

Larry Fleet is just one example. You won’t find Larry Fleet in a horned hat at the Grammys surrounded by women in bondage gear. And Larry Fleet isn’t confused about who he is like Sam Smith, a gay man who calls himself “nonbinary,” whatever that means, or Kim Petras, a man presenting himself as a woman who had “gender-affirming” sex change surgery at 16 years old.

Here is Larry Fleet singing his most famous song, the one which made him a budding star…

Another Fleet favorite is “Best That I Got”…

Contrast the simply clarity and tranquil beauty of Fleet’s music with these lyrics…

Mummy don’t know Daddy’s getting hot
At the Body Shop
Doin’ something unholy
He’s sat back while she’s droppin’ it
She be poppin’ it
Yeah, she put it down slowly
Oh-ee-oh-ee-oh, he left his kids at
Ho-ee-oh-ee-ome so he can get that

Which is drivel, but it’s worse than that…

Mm, daddy, daddy, if you want it, drop the addy (Yeah, yeah)
Give me love, give me Fendi, my Balenciaga daddy
You gon’ need to bag it up ’cause I’m spendin’ on Rodeo (Woo)
You can watch me back it up, I’ll be gone in the A.M. (Yeah)
And he, he get me Prada, get me Miu Miu like Rihanna (Ah)
He always call me ’cause I never cause no drama (Drama)
And when you want it, baby, I know I got you covered (Yeah, yeah)
And when you need it, baby, just jump under the covers (Yeah)

Sam Smith and Kim Petras have to resort to offending you because they can’t inspire you. There is nothing beautiful or true in “Unholy.” It’s banal, petty, and stupid. And that “performance” at the Grammys, the unimaginative effort at titillation while presenting the gay/trans agenda in the worst possible light amid demanding acceptance for it, is proof.

Everybody understands this. Openly pushing Satanism is a confession that you’ve given up trying to make real art or chase beauty and now you’re just trying to shock people to get attention.

This was Petras’ explanation of the song…

“I think a lot of people, honestly, have kind of labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as religiously not cool. And I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it, but then slowly realizing it doesn’t want me to be a part of it.

“So, it’s a take on not being able to choose religion and not being able to live the way that people might want you to live because, you know, as a trans person, I’m kind of already not wanted in religion.”

Unleashing an open tribute to Satan is hardly what necessarily follows as a response to having been rejected by the church for a sinful lifestyle, you know. There are other options. Of course, those are less scandalous and thus less attractive to the talentless attention whores who run the Grammys.

But some of us are so dumbed-down, so desensitized to the smell of our cultural decline, that all they can do is celebrate this as an expression of “free speech.”

As Starbuck noted, they’re trained seals who can’t even understand the history of their arguments — the fact that for a century the very enemies of freedom have promoted the destruction of the culture in the name of “free speech” as a strategic goal.

From its inception, the Communist Party USA, for example, promoted pornography and vulgarity in the name of freedom in an effort to demoralize the public and make us ready for revolution. This was deliberate. It came straight from directives in Moscow. Soviet defectors like Yuri Bezmenov and Ion Mihai Pacepa (who was actually Romanian) were quite plain about it.

Which is not to say that the network executives at CBS, who are ultimately responsible for Sunday night’s abortion of a Grammy special, are out to demoralize America. That’s giving them far too much credit.

No, CBS put this trash on their air because they no longer have the leadership capable of upholding standards. A network exec worthy of his salary would have taken one look at that show script and laughed before firing everybody involved. But such people don’t work in media anymore. Perhaps the drones who do are directed by more sinister cultural arsonists; I don’t discount that possibility. There is far too much destruction afoot for it to be a series of coincidences. A week ago a director of HBO’s The Last of Us admitted that he “tricked” viewers of the third episode into watching a non-sequitur gay love story inserted into the plot, and the movie channel’s top brass was perfectly willing to allow it.

That isn’t all incompetence, though the effect — Hollywood lost half a trillion dollars in market value last year, and there is now a proxy fight afoot at Disney, which piled up a big chunk of those losses — looks much like incompetence. There is evil afoot in the pop culture. It isn’t the minor mischief of Elvis shaking his hips. It’s real evil. A gay/trans singing duo extolling Balenciaga, the fashion house under fire for openly promoting BDSM among children, is more than the juvenile misbehavior rock and roll was born with.

When the prudish critics of his performances said that his antics were satanic, Elvis Presley — a devout Christian who sang gospel songs, and quite beautifully, from the beginning of his career to the end — was greatly upset by it. One imagines he’d be profoundly offended at the use of his name to justify what happened on that stage Sunday night.

What Congress should be doing in response to this is to go on the attack against media conglomerates like Paramount, the corporation which owns CBS and oodles of other media brands — Showtime, MTV, Simon & Schuster, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET and countless others. It’s time to unwind these conglomerates and force the media space to be smaller and more competitive.

And as Pfizer was the sponsor of Sunday’s disgusting spectacle, maybe it’s time to make things inconvenient for them as well.

It isn’t enough for regular folks to boycott the Grammys. Looking at the ratings, we’re already doing that and we have been for years. It doesn’t have any effect, because poor TV ratings make no appreciable difference in Paramount’s bottom line.

Disney had been stagnating as a company for years before Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature smacked them directly in the face over their political offensive over the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act. But once they’d lost a key tax credit and suffered the PR disaster that came from fighting DeSantis and losing, it spelled a stock crash, the forced resignation of the company’s CEO, and now something on the order of a hostile takeover is finally coming.

Political action can be ruinous to a major corporation. The Left proved that; the Right knows it now as well.

And you can’t argue that our culture isn’t in the gutter. Not after Sunday.

Don’t get outraged. Get smart. This is an opportunity to punish the people who are rotting out our society. And it’s long past time to go on offense.

Scott McKay
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Scott McKay is a contributing editor at The American Spectator  and publisher of the Hayride, which offers news and commentary on Louisiana and national politics, and RVIVR.com, a national political news aggregation and opinion site. Additionally, he's the author of the new book The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, available at Amazon.com. He’s also a writer of fiction — check out his three Tales of Ardenia novels Animus, Perdition and Retribution at Amazon. Scott's other project is The Speakeasy, a free-speech social and news app with benefits - check it out here.
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