The Trouble with Beyonce

It seems like these days, Beyonce can't get a break. First, Governor Huck tees off on her for being a bad influence on kids, and now Steve Kroft is telling his luscious gal pal not to dress like Beyonce. What gives?

It's not like she was part of the Super Bowl festivities or any other high profile event recently. It just seems that her name rolls effortlessly off some persons tongues and has become synonymous with shame.

Beyonce has been known to wear skin-tight outfits and teeny weeny bikinis, but then what contemporary female pop start doesn't flaunt her body these days? You don't hear Huck attacking Britney Spears or Shakira. Judging by Steve's "sexts," which went public, he seemed to enjoy his mistress's racy selfies.

One comes to expect this misplaced moral outrage from Huck, but what's with Steve Kroft, a self-professed "liberal." Surely, he wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with Beyonce, who can dress quite nicely when the occasion suits her. Huck seems mostly upset Beyonce has free access to the Obama White House, and even sang, or rather lip-synced the national anthem to her own pre-recorded voice at the last inauguration. Huck did compliment her on her "pipes."

Sadly, the Beyonce bashing doesn't stop here. Back in 2012, Harry Belafonte blasted Beyonce for not engaging in enough social activities. In 2013, She and her husband Jay Z made a high profile trip to Cuba, which was approved by the White House as part of a cultural exchange program, even if it happened to coincide with their fifth wedding anniversary. Beyonce may not be a Bruce Springsteen, as Harry bellowed, but she and Jay Z, are involved in a number of charitable activities. For all we know, the two may have been laying the groundwork for normalization with Cuba.

But, Huck can't let go of Beyonce. He must privately fantasize over her to keep bringing her up on his book promotion tour. To be fair, he also trashed the gals at Fox for their gutter language. Seems he's still upset with Megyn for inadvertently calling him "Fuckabee," which was probably his nickname around the Fox studio. You have to wonder where that came from.

However, I thought Beyonce made it pretty clear that if you wanted to be anywhere near her you had to "put a ring on it." Surely, that is a wholesome message we can all agree with. Seems Jay Z did just that.

Comments

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog