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Continue ShoppingTHE FAT LADY SINGS... STILL!
THE FAT LADY SINGS…
STILL!
The Fat Lady has sung.
It’s supposed to be over.
OVER.
S’not though!
S’NOT~
I forgot which sage said:
“It ain’t over till it’s over…”
… so I looked it up and it was said by Yogi Berra...
... in 1973 as the NY Mets were so far behind in the pennant race they eventually won...
... that no one believed they would win; except Yogi.
His words ring très true today.
Très.
And many people live in abject fear of those words being true.
FEAR.
Those people fear that The FAT LADY will maintain the center spotlight on stage long, long after the performance she was hired for officially ends. The Fat Lady’s ardent fans, and acolytes, are clamoring loudly for “more”, demanding it even, and working diligently to change the very form and substance of the last opera as it was performed. Indeed, they’re working madly to change the very structure of the entire milieu to accomplish The Fat Lady’s desires. Only this ain’t about an encore from a Maria Callas...
...type diva in a large scale musical endeavor, or for a National Baseball League divisional championship.
Nope…
The stakes here are far higher, far, far higher…
... and no one can get The Fat Lady off the fucking stage and out of the Opera House.
Truth to tell, The Fat Lady ain’t center stage any longer. The main spotlight has shifted away from her robust visage to the other leads in the last opera.
But even though The Fat Lady’s role in the new opera at hand is diminished, her character completely written out early in the first act, she hasn’t stood down. The Fat Lady has a need for a larger ongoing role moving forward, and she is going to wail loudly until she gets her way.
WAAAAAAAAAAAA…
The Fat Lady is wailing off key now, screaming gibberish oft times as she is completely without a libretto to follow. The Fat Lady’s structured role in the new opera about to begin is ancillary at best, fluff almost, passe`even. Her role in this upcoming opera is a minor, tangential tidbit to the central story and terminates early in the first act. The Fat Lady is appalled by this slight and is demanding a full rewrite of the new opera. In this new version she will again be the star...
... the lead. So far she has been thwarted as the new opera was cast, staged as written, officially placed in production, dress rehearsal done, and waiting to premiere.
PREMIER.
But The Fat Lady wails on.
MAY THE FORMS BE DAMNED!
She wails on…
And on…
AND ON.
Many media critics sympathetic to The Fat Lady, and her multitudinous ardent fans, are in rapt attention to the twists, turns, machinations, and perversions inherent in her attempt to elongate her time on stage. If only someone in the empowered section of the audience, the patrons, or management, had the smarts, or the balls, to turn the lights off in the theater, send the audience out the door, and drag the bitch off the stage.
Screaming I’m sure…
If only…
But The Fat Lady’s verbal wrath is known to be merciless as is her ability to wield the levers of power, institutional and communicatory, around her to devastate any opposition. In fear of her wrath, no one, not a patron, not management, will stand up to her; no one. So, today, weeks after her last stage performance, The Fat Lady wails on to the detriment of all opera.
THE FAT LADY SINGS… Still!
STILL...
It’s a sad thing to watch, and yet on many levels it’s fascinating. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. If the consequences of this performance weren’t so deadly for the artform The Fat Lady dominates currently this gig might be entertaining.
But her mere presence on the stage today sucks the lifeblood out of everyone else in the genre. As if that weren’t enough, the rabid adoration of her multitudinous fans, and the obeisance of her acolytes, could doom the very future of the theater she performs in, if not the entire artform, evermore.
EVERMORE…
Evermore.
DOOMED!
OK…
Enough with The Fat Lady metaphor, it’s time to be serious. Regardless of how obvious the metaphors above were, this is seminal, core, societal threatening stuff. Who’d a thunk it would come down to this? Certainly not I, but here we be.
Here…
The Donald, The Fat Lady incarnate...
... refuses to leave the office of the presidency. The Donald refuses to concede the 2020 election, he claims victory in spite of the indisputable facts that show he lost.
The Donald's supporters, some 74,000,000 of them, plus or minus a few, and his acolytes, 140 in The House of Representatives, and a select few of the 53 Republicans in the Senate majority are rallying in defense of his absurd demands to stay in power.
Their goal is to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
They want to obviate the will of the 81,000,000 plus Biden majority voters and keep The Donald, and themselves in power no matter what.
No matter what…
POWER UBER ALLES…
… democracy be damned.
Declaring "martial law" was even suggested in a Friday night meeting in the Oval Office.
MARTIAL LAW.
The mere suggestion of “MARTIAL LAW” (in the Oval Office no less), is abhorrent to me, just as the possibility “MARTIAL LAW” is beyond frightening to me.
BEYOND…
This is AMERICA, not a third world Banana Republic.
When did our leaders, we (74,000,000 of us anyway)...
... become what for centuries we have decried, and fought, against?
Well…
Politics in America is a well-rehearsed and repetitive game. Electoral themes, strategies, campaigns, oft times repeat. In 1950 Joe McCarthy engaged in a populist crusade against communism as a means to garner fame and power.
Instead of using the Evangelical Protestants as his initial power base (like The Donald did), McCarthy who was Catholic, appealed to the nations Catholics. For the previous 22 years the Catholics were a politically dormant, ignored, or derided, voting bloc. Ever since the Catholic Governor of New York, Al Smith suffered a hobbling and humiliating defeat in his quest for the presidency in 1928 the Catholics had hungered for political recognition.
McCarthy used the hunger of the politically beleaguered, but universally patriotic, and staunchly anticommunist Catholics of his day as his base to rise higher and higher nationally. Finally, to stop McCarthy’s rise, the traditional powers within the Republican Party, including Eisenhower, began to push back.
It’s interesting to note that when McCarthy was “condemned”, not “censured”, (although that "condemnation" was deemed to be equivocal to a "censure"), by his fellow senators for his political overreach and horrendous tactics, only one Democratic senator, also a Catholic, did not vote to condemn. That senator was:
John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
One of Kennedy’s reasons for his support of McCarthy (another was that they, and their families, were known to be close friends), was the adoration the Catholic voters in Kennedy’s home state had for McCarthy. JFK is purported to have said to his aide Arthur M. Schlesinger when asked why he avoided criticizing McCarthy:
"Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero".
The seeds of sectarian politics in America go way, way back. As do the seeds of negative campaigning through fear mongering, hate, name calling, and derision. Those political tools were successful politically in America from the get go. Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy's chief aide, attorney, mentor, guide and acolyte pictured below with a young wannabe, Donald Trump, was a prime devotee and developer of all in the modern age. It looks like the young Donald was willing student and player way back then...
Neither McCarthy nor The Donald developed any of these dictums; although it’s obvious that The Donald’s 20th Century media savvy refined them and made them way more effective.
WAY.
Prior to The Donald, President Richard Nixon, AKA "TRICKY DICKY" was a polished practitioner of the above. Anyone in the press who was called one of the:
“nattering nabobs of negativism”…
… in 1970 by Nixon’s then vice-president Spiro T. Agnew can attest to that polish. Like The Donald, Nixon faced Impeachment as president. Unlike The Donald, who was Impeached, but survived, Nixon when facing sure impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, precipitously fell from power.
Nixon fell, and fast, because his political support in the House and Senate collapsed. Today The Donald has a much firmer, fervent, power base in both halls of Congress; and their lies the rub.
Could the House and Senate, under the auspices of Vice President Pence, overturn the will of the people? It's not likely, but could they?
Could the Military deny the will of the people and follow orders from their current Commander-In-Chief in obviating the election of 2020? That's not likely either, but could they?
The media is having a field day with speculation on the various possibilities of the outcome of this Trumpian mischief.
A FIELD DAY…
And I watch in horror.
HORROR!
Stay tuned.
Everyone knows that
And for sure it ain't over until The Fat Lady Sings,
But she's done did the final song...
Now, how do we get The Fat Lady off the stage and out of the fucking theater once and for all?
Just how?
HOW?
STOP SINGING ALREADY…
Please.
Pretty please...
