The Google logo has been blacked out today. Wikipedia, reddit, Mozilla and Twitpic are all blocking access to content.  Even Star Trek icon George Takei has blocked his site.  The moves are displays of cyber-protest against the heavy-handed and ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

From a political and public relations standpoint, this has already been a complete and utter failure for Hollywood and their formerly formidable lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America. Former Sen. Chris Dodd became the new CEO of the MPAA after he realized he would never be re-elected in his home state of Connecticut due to his personal scandals with Countrywide Mortgage and his involvement in the mortgage collapse at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So naturally, Hollywood hired the failed Senator as their man in Washington. Dodd has been the chief architect of SOPA, which was written with about as much subtlety and constitutional protocol as his equally disastrous Dodd-Frank banking law.

The merits of SOPA and the overall issue of online piracy is a worthy topic, and it can be argued that the federal government should have some hand in policing and enforcing piracy on behalf of private industries and artists who rely on royalties as a major part of their profit structure. These details can and should be debated here and in Washington DC. What is striking about today’s Internet blackout and the over-the-top reaction to it from Dodd is that this arrogant, befuddled and inept former Senator has finally figured out a way to unite the left and the right to focus their passion against a common enemy:  Hollywood. 

When was the last time left-leaning companies like Google aligned themselves with the Heritage Foundation? When have you seen left-wing think tanks like Demand Progress taking the same stand on an issue as Tea Party organizations? How often do you see Huffington Post columnists parrot talking points from the CATO Institute? Yet, thanks to the arrogance and ineptitude of Chris Dodd and the MPAA, these disparate groups are all aiming their ire at the Hollywood industry and the politicians who gladly take their donations and then push through ill-conceived legislation with the subtlety of an elephant in a ballet.

No matter how the SOPA legislation ends up, this episode should send a clear message to Hollywood and the elite few who share the same big government nanny-state desires embodied in the SOPA bill. Annoyance and anger at the pompous industry transcends ideological lines, and when an industry chooses a buffoon like Chris Dodd to handle what should be a nuanced and introspective regulation that polices piracy without stifling free expression, they deserve the black eye they are getting.

Face it, Hollywood: America is telling you to take a leap, and take your failure of a lobbyist with you.

But Baldwin doesn’t want OWS to go away without learning a key lesson from it. So, he took to the cyber-pages of The Huffington Post to share what OWS has taught him.

And, wouldn’t you know it, he came away with one thoroughly conservative principle at the top of his list – let the market play out sans bailouts:

One important lesson, I believe, is that bailouts of major corporations in any and all industries are counterproductive to long term economic health. And not simply direct infusions of cash as loans, tossed like gargantuan life preservers, in moments of greatest perceived dread. I’m talking about the bailouts the US government gives major corporations every day. The excessive fees forced on customers by certain banks, not to mention the predatory lending practices of the mortgage industry (coupled with the remarkably stupid borrowing of certain homeowners).

The rest of Baldwin’s arguments veer more toward the left, but it’s still surreal to hear him singing a tune heard on conservative talk stations.

Baldwin is already trying to work his way onto the radio airwaves as a possible post-sitcom career move. Who knows, maybe he’s been listening to El Rushbo in between tapings of “30 Rock?”

This woman took very, very little in the way of ability and somehow provided a service – of a kind that frankly baffles me – that millions of people nevertheless want to spend their money on. Regardless, it’s none of your or my business, and it’s especially none of the government’s business.

But now, here comes “Occupy Hollywood,” a hilarious exercise in poetic justice in which the left proposes to chase its own tail by attacking the same cretinous celebrities who have been the first to parrot every commie slogan the bongo-playing degenerates of Occupy Wall Street have misspelled on their placards.

Jo Piazza, the author of some remainder bin perennial titled Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, is leading the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you-athon with an article in The Huffington Post called “Occupy Hollywood: Why It’s Time To Call Out High-Earning Celebrities.”

For some reason, she thinks what movie stars make is some sort of problem:

Yet, the middle class continues to prop up the .01 percent: Hollywood celebrities who make millions just for being themselves. When it comes to making money, celebrities are abnormal. Their enormous salaries make them outliers in the American economy, on a pay grade above most CEOs, surgeons and lawyers — the professions that typically come to mind when we think of the wealthy.

Well, it sure is a problem, like global warming is a problem — that is, it isn’t. As Chet the Unicorn would say if he was here and not riding the magic rainbow to Happyland, that some people she envies are successful is apparently America’s greatest crisis; ergo, you should all be outraged! After all, to liberals, government’s primary function is catering to the worst impulses of jealous busybodies.

Piazza whines about Kardashian, Snooki, and Brangelina making money. For some reason, she is under the impression that what celebrities make is her business:

It is messed up! So what can we do about it?

Only a liberal sees other people being successful and finds it imperative to put a stop to it. Her solution?

So how about a movement to Occupy Hollywood?

Gimme a break. Here’s a better idea. How about you and the rest of the left-wing morons start a movement to shut the hell up?

We, as conservatives who love freedom – meaning of necessity that we love free enterprise and detest the idea of the kind of fascist nanny state these losers would impose in order to to make the world conform to their arbitrary and self-serving concepts of fairness – need to draw the battle line here, at the celebrities.

We need to defend the right of everyone – even stupid, useless, vapid nincompoops – to get rich.

Johnny Depp (by all accounts a good guy) made $50 million last year, Piazza complains. And we conservatives must say, “Awesome!”

Liberals see success as a problem – if people are able to live their own lives without the guidance of aspiring liberal fascists, the entire premise of liberalism is fatally undercut. So success is the target, and not a lot of people have been as successful as Johnny Depp has.

Yeah, he’s earned a lot of money. That’s great! The key word is “earned.” He has talent, he has skill, and he provides something that makes him worth $50 million a year to someone. That someone wants his services and considers it a good deal to fork over $50 mil, but Piazza, the liberal fascist, would prefer to substitute her arbitrary assessment of his value for the free choice of those who actually are paying him.

Hell no.

Depp’s time and talent belong to him — not to Piazza, not Michael Moore, not to any of those drumming idiots in Zuccotti Park.

It belongs to him, not her, and he owes no one – not me, not you, not Piazza, not Obama – any explanations, reasons or excuses. If he wishes to bathe nude in a swimming pool full of twenties, that’s his business and none of ours.

It’s his property. Taking it from him, as Piazza would love to do to satisfy her personal vision of justice, is theft.

It’s morally wrong.

And as a practical matter, it’s devastating. Piazza and the rest of her envious, thieving loser pals don’t really care about Depp’s millions. They care about our thousands. Hell, we all know how communism works; it’s the regular folks who get their property redistributed while the nomenklatura elite lives in luxury.

We can safely assume Piazza envisions herself a redistributer rather than a redistributee. It’s always like that with liberals; somehow we end up making the sacrifice while they sip champagne. Do you think Al Gore is going to take a seat on a biodiesel Greyhound bus or hop on a private jet to the next climate change scam confab?

Spreading hate for the successful, lying that their success is somehow illegitimate or “unearned” because it fails to meet some ever-shifting set of arbitrary standards, is simply a way to get their fascist footsies in the door to redistribute us.

Sure, it’s amusing to see a bunch of liberal Hollywood nitwits suddenly confronted by howling leftists who the stars thought they had been backing. As entertaining as poetic justice is, it’s still wrong to take people’s property just because they are stupid and embrace idiotic ideas – Alec Baldwin, I’m looking your way.

Sure, you have an elitist buffoon like Frank Rich figuratively – at least – sporting wood over the idea that this Occupy Wall Street nonsense will develop into a real class war. Limo leftists are always turned on by the thought of real live revolution – that’s why they don t-shirts silk-screened with the mug of that butcher Che Guevara (they forget how that coward died begging for his useless life before the CIA and Bolivian Army sent him on an eternal vacation to hell).

But dilettantes like Rich and the Hollywood left would soon find themselves against the bullet-pocked wall if a real revolution came. And they’d die wondering why, as so many other useful idiots have in the aftermath of previous leftist revolutions.

Of course, that won’t happen here, because there won’t be a leftist revolution, because too many of us will fight to the death before we ever let that happen. So there’s no real danger; the elite leftists from Hollywood to New York can keep on posing as the vanguard of the coming people’s struggle, kept safe and secure, as always, by the efforts of better men and women than themselves.

In the meantime, we can hold the line for freedom and free enterprise by defending the rights of clowns named Kardashian and malignant dwarfs named Snooki to sell whatever it is that people – for whatever unfathomable reason – choose to buy from them.

Maybe a few celebrities might learn a lesson from Occupy Hollywood.  Maybe some might not be so quick to reflexively adopt the latest tidbit of lefty received wisdom next time. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t defend their freedom because we like them. We do so because it is the right thing to do, and because when we defend their freedom, we are defending our own.

Alec Baldiwn, famed for his left-wing diatribes — oh, and some acting here and there — took to Twitter once again to criticize the readers and commenters at HuffPo after a gaggle of negative comments posted at the tail end of one of his latest HuffPo screeds.

“The reading comprehension level of the HuffPo comments folks is alarmingly low. I mean, downright awful,” Baldwin lamented.

Now, usually when I write about things like this I go into why the comment by the writer was made, what misconceptions were evinced by his critics, and what his response was to those critics… but it’s Alec Baldwin and Huffington Post we are talking about here. Making sense of anything that goes on there is somewhat impossible, not to mention a waste of time.

Suffice to say, it is interesting to see leftists calling each other names. And this isn’t the only time Alec Baldwin has scolded readers of HuffPo. He’s done it on Twitter before.

All this internecine name-calling between Baldwin and HuffPo readers made Laura Donovan of Daily Caller wonder if it was copacetic with the staff of HuffPo if its own writers constantly disparaged the site’s readers?

Personally, I would think there isn’t any real proscription against it other than good taste. Seriously. Baldwin should be able to diss his own readers all he wants. Besides, he’s right at least about the general level of idiocy seen in the comments section of HuffPo. Of course, the articles themselves are no better, but, well… I mean… it’s Huffington Post, ya know?

Why Christian symbols? We’re awfully easy pickings. If you’re a rich Hollywood star, offending us takes about as much courage as bringing a case of beer to a frat party.

Why not Islamic images? Where’s that comedic edge and ballsy envelope pushing we’re always being told about when it comes to our Artistic Class? Christians are tired of this self-important posing. Islamists will take your head off. I would think that Islamist intolerance (and racism and sexism and homophobia and fundamentalism) would be a bigger target than than Christian eye rolls.

Well, if nohing else, at least Gervais was good enough to bring the pretension:

 I thought the caption … could be “Stand up for what you believe”.

Doesn’t he mean for “what you don’t believe”?

Actually, he doesn’t. That’s why I call him Gervais an “evangelical atheist.” He’s one of those obnoxious non-believers always pushing his non-belief on you. He’s like a Mooonie without the charm, flowers or airport.

Back to the pretension:

Should art have a social conscience?

I’m a comedian. Some people probably object to me using the term artist about such a lowly profession. And some people think I shouldn’t even be pondering such highfalutin questions, let alone answering them.

So for a change I’ll try to be economical with my opinions and simply try to provoke yours.

First of all, what is a social conscience?

Help us all, Gervais is actually turning into the insufferable, self-important David Brent.

Hmmm … the course of Marxist genius never runs smoothly.

If you don’t believe me, read the life of Bertolt Brecht.

However, Peter Sellars’ Marxism, as Wikipedia prefers to translate it, is to be a “progressively radical” artist of some sort.

With President Obama in the White House, it can now be known as “radically Progressive”: the Progressive Clinton as versus the radically Progressive Obama.

Radicalism, a la Van Jones, even as seen through the eyes of the Huffington Post, is the inevitability of the “Progressive” New World Order, whether you like it or not.

There is, however, one impressively dialectical twist in this drama: women such as Alice Goodman, the librettist.

Her Marxist heresy, because of the ministerial collar, is what is sometimes referred to by the KGB  hardliners as the Western Sentimentality of “useful idiots” and the decadent schmaltz seems to have escaped even the intriguingly odd but hawk-eyed Peter Sellars.

Reverend Goodman is still a “Progressive” of the Progressively Baptist Bill Clinton sort. She is actually an ordained Anglican priest; and is now a chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge.

The initial Wizard of Nixon In China happened to be the director, Peter Sellars.

The real Wizard, however, is Alice Goodman.

Peter Sellars’ instincts about Alice Goodman were Brechtian genius itself.

However, Alice Goodman’s love of God’s mysteries seemed to have escaped even the hawk-eyed and progressively radical Peter Sellars.

Either that or he simply endured the “mysteries” within Ms. Goodman’s poetry as allowably Buddhist.

Communism is ultimately no sin to Buddhism. The Dalai Lama actually admits to being a Marxist.

Besides, the John Adams’ musical portrait of Chou En-Lai contains the requisite, albeit poetic, sentimentality required to sell Chou En-Lai to America as the real hero of Nixon In China.

Score ten for the Progressive New World Order!

The music, in fact “minimalism” in general, just seems a lazy way to whip out hours of agitation for a profoundly complex encounter between two massively powerful cultures.

Laying that aside, what kept me glued to the You Tube video of the Houston Opera Company’s Production was Alice Goodman’s libretto.

Quite annoyingly, that libretto is not available on the internet. Scores of the entire opera cost $120 Canadian dollars … including delivery of course.

All I wished to see was the libretto but then how will John Adams get his share of the profits from a poetess he and Peter Sellars singlehandedly made?! Who taught them Marxist economics?

Michael Moore?

Sean Penn?

Is this Marxism? Or just good ole American, villainous Capitalism?

Rev. Goodman, however, and her firmly feminist point of view dominates Nixon In China. How else could she earn post-modern credentials with these Marxist men in her life?

She does indeed spare no amount of operatic melodrama in examining both the heroine and villainess of Nixon In China.

Ms. Goodman’s own romantic yearnings, God bless her, rise up not only in the huge question Chou En-Lai leaves us hanging on at the end, but also in the Cultural Revolution Ballet. This play-within-an-opera ballet and its hero and heroine, its Romeo and Juliet, caught amidst the Machiavellian nightmares within the Nixon In China opera itself?

Would she had Rachmaninoff’s lyricism and Stravinsky’s muscle to canonize the brilliant contrasts that sit and eagerly wait for a great composer. Then again, those two composers were decidedly not Marxists. Stravinsky was Russian Orthodox and exiled himself to, of all places, hamburger-eating, pre-Nixon America.

The ideological contrasts of Nixon In China alone make the encounter with Ms. Goodman herself fascinating.

Here she is!

Reverend Goodman, mind you!

A Marxist Christian?

She’s certainly a big fan of Chou En-Lai.

He’s the hero of Nixon In China.

You were right, Mr. Adams!

The idea of Nixon In China was a “risky” one … but possibly helpful enough to pave Elitism’s Way for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to both become Presidents of the United States.

Hmmm … now there’s the major question of not only this editorial, and this hour but this coming decade … and possibly this century … or human infinity.

Can there be such a thing as a Marxist Christian?

The Dalai Lama himself is a Marxist and Chosen One of Buddha!

Why not?

There was Liberation Catholicism running all around South America, wasn’t there?

God and Karl Marx.

The Almighty and The Grandest of Atheists!

Who can’t see them married?!

The alternate lifestyle of a Marxist … no, the Community Organizing Fundamental of a Progressive New World Order!

“Let’s wear down those ugly Americans such as Sarah Palin!!”

“If she becomes President America will have the West’s version of Mao’s Chiang Ching!!!”

“Maggie Thatcher in jack boots!!!!”

“Ronald Reagan in drag!!!!!”

“A virtual animal! Mamma Grizzly as POTUS!!!!!!”

“The solution is to surround these ‘stupid people’ with not only their cultural superiors like Bill Maher The Atheist but their religious superiors such as Alice Goodman as well.”

“They’ll never be able to understand the divine subtleties within the Marriage of God and Karl Marx!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Such an achievement is far beyond the vulgarities of Catholic idiocies such as Figaro or Mozart’s Don Giovanni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Match-making God and Karl is the only possible hope for peace, you know.”

“If not, Judeo-Christians, you are toast!! Toast!!! Toast!!!!!”

This last bit of libretto within my comic opera is sung in falsetto, a la Alban Berg.

Having spent two whole days with Nixon In China, I sympathize sincerely with Chou En-Lai’s exhaustion in the final scene.

As for Henry Kissinger, the double for a villainous landowner in the Cultural Revolution Ballet?

Here he isas The 20^th Century’s Greatest Courtier.

Why am I so sure that both Goodman and Adams are Marxists?

Anticipating the increasingly obvious and desperately inevitable marriage of Marx and Islam, they both, along with Sellars as well, prophetically mind you, gave voice to the Palestinian version of Israel’s “unacceptability” in their next opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

From Wikipedia:

Following “Nixon,” the three collaborated on a second opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” about the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking by Palestinians in which an elderly American Jew was killed. It premiered in 1991 but was promptly assailed by charges that it was anti-Semitic and glorified Palestinian terrorists. Several planned productions were canceled and the work has rarely been performed since, although the Opera Theater of St. Louis is presenting it next June.

Adams, Goodman and Sellars repeatedly claimed that they were trying to give equal voice to both Israelis and Palestinians with respect to the political background.

But the period of composition was a momentous one for Goodman personally. Raised a Reform Jew in St. Paul, Minn., she had married English poet Geoffrey Hill, and while writing “Klinghoffer” she converted to Christianity. She was later ordained as an Anglican priest and is currently winding up a stint as chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge.

This Christian Marxist felt obliged to give two sides of the story in this second opera and here’s a larger version of “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

Communist Islam rising!!!

Can you hear the orchestra in full fortissimo??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I glimpsed the British version of Alice Goodman. It was Vanessa Redgrave sitting in the audience of the Tony Awards.

Both Goodman and Redgrave?

Oh, not both at The Tony Awards but brilliantly “useful talents” for the Communist Revolution.

The fact that God gave the two of them their talents seems a lie to Vanessa and a reason for Alice to make God a Marxist.

Now that’s not a bad idea for an opera: Marx’s conversion of God to Communism!

Obviously Alice Goodman is the only poet qualified to write the libretto since she obviously feels that is exactly what must have happened.

Alice Goodman, the Brechtian poet of Heaven.

Where’s Kurt Weill when you need him?

And who could possibly sing the role of God?

If it’s a movie?

The ghost of Frank Sinatra.

Italian Communism is, of course, as complex a thing as Alice Goodman might possibly want to confuse us with.

Unfortunately I doubt if Mr. Sinatra will want to even show up for rehearsal.

Why?

Karl Marx would be a tenor!

The tenor always steals the show from the baritone in an opera.

God is not Wozzeck.

The Almighty is never quite that stupid.

A new kind of film emerged in the late ‘80s and first half of the 1990s to as an alternative to the mind-numbing noise of the Boomer Blockbusters. Smaller studios like Miramax rose to champion independent films. Generation X auteurs shaped by obsessive home video viewing – Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Darren Aronofsky – passed on the Hollywood path and instead built careers through low budget, DIY productions. “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sydney,” “El Mariachi,” “Clerks,” and “Pi” launched careers that would lead to Academy Awards and some of the most exciting films of the 1990s and 2000s.

These filmmakers’ origins are true to the generational temperament of their peers.

Children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s did not grow up in the affluence and tranquility of the 1950s consensus. Instead they took a backseat as the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s raged. It was now when the younger Silent and Boomer Generations rose up to challenge the cultural institutions built and maintained by the GI Generation who fought World War II.

The children of this era were forced to become independent, entrepreneurial, and innovative early on. Unlike the Boomers growing up in the ‘50s and the Millennials in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Gen-Xers were not protected. The adults were too busy with the cultural chaos of the ‘60s and ‘70s to be the parents they should have been. Thus, Gen X knew that they had no one to rely on except for themselves. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their histories of American generations, this is standard for “Reactive” generations – and equips them for crises come middle-age. George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman were all part of “Reactive” generations too.

We can see how this mentality applied itself to Gen-X filmmakers. When these future auteurs wanted to make a film they maxed out their credit cards (Smith,) or volunteered for medical experiments (Rodriguez) and shot with the cheapest supplies available.

For Andrew Breitbart the path tread has been comparable. How can one reform a corrupt media complex that’s in the Democrats’ back pocket? Become the Media. Control of NBC is not necessary to launch stories that result in the defunding of ACORN or a congressman’s resignation.

Breitbart was born in 1969 – almost the middle of Generation X. The first 100 pages of Righteous Indignation, his hybrid memoir-manifesto, trace a trajectory not uncommon to others now in their mid ‘30s to late ‘40s. Breitbart’s college years were a time of high grade slack, irresponsible gambling, chemical self-destruction, and Marxist indoctrination. Emerging out of the haze with a worthless degree Breitbart set about rising from the bottom of the Hollywood pecking order.

His job as a script deliverer meant shuttling packages around town while listening to the radio. This drew Breitbart into politics and the media, with the first blow to his anti-intellectual Hollywood leftism dealt during the Clarence Thomas hearings. The coup de grace came in the subsequent search for alternative answers when Breitbart dared tune his radio dial to someone he thought was a “Nazi,” Rush Limbaugh.

Then began a media voyage through the late ‘90s and first half of the ‘00s including apprenticeship with Matt Drudge during the Clinton years and constructing The Huffington Post while George W. Bush was in office. Righteous Indignation then shifts into manifesto form with two chapters that should be released as stand-alone pamphlets. Chapter 6 is “Breakthrough,” an accessible summary of the Left from Rousseau through Marx to the Frankfurt School and Saul Alinsky. In chapter 5 Breitbart lays out his rules of political warfare in his “Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.”

The remaining chapters tell Breitbart’s narrative putting the Rules and the Breakthrough knowledge into practice to fight ACORN and defend the Tea Party.

What won’t you find in Righteous Indignation? Some manifesto of Breitbart’s political beliefs.

Breitbart is not driven by creating some “right-wing” utopia. He’s not obsessed with Liberalism vs. Conservatism as David Mamet is. He’s focused on disrupting and exposing the practical and concrete effects of the Left.

The takeaway from Righteous Indignation is that citizen journalists now have all the tools needed to bring down corrupt politicians, bad laws, and destructive organizations. Breitbart has bypassed the mainstream media gatekeepers just as his Gen-X cinema peers overcame the boomer blockbuster mentality.

The endowment of Generation X Hollywood Apostates is pragmatic independence: Ideology is not important. Dealing with the problems themselves in an effective way is what matters. Results matter. New institutions can and should be built.

In Part 5 of the Hollywood Revolt, we’ll conclude with a look at the future of both film and politics as a new generation rises and an old one is reincarnated.

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

It’s not just that her music is bad – though it is, an intermittently catchy collection of overproduced beats laid over nonsense lyrics that would embarrass a slow-witted high school sophomore.  It’s not just that her singing is reminiscent of the hum of a dental drill, a monotonous, atonal mind-chisel that – when combined with her inane lyrics – reminds one of the chanting of some unholy love child of Rain Man and Tiny Tim.  

And it’s not just that she’s pretentious, presenting herself as the sorta-androgynous spoke-being for a coterie of alleged nonconformists whose nonconformity is expressed via rigid conformity to GaGa’s vision of pseudo-transgressive fashions and brain-dead self-affirming slogans.

No, the biggest problem with Lady GaGa isn’t that she’s another lame pop star.  It’s that she’s so damn boring.

As an act of personal sacrifice, I listened to the sneak release of her latest song, an atrocity called “Judas.”  If you want to share my pain, be my guest, but don’t say you weren’t warned.  The Huffington Post, your number one source for all things that suck, is right on top of the earthshaking cultural event that is “Judas”:

The song and video are told from Mary Magdelene’s perspective, with lyrics such as, “When he comes to me, I am ready/ I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs/ Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain/ Even after three times, he betrays me/ I’ll bring him down, a king with no crown…”

Wow.  Heavy.  I guess I’m supposed to be one of those bourgeois squares whose mind is going to be blown by GagGa’s willingness to take on those terrifying Christians.  I’m here to report, however, that the only thing that blows is the song.

First, not being one of the socially retarded 18-25 years old shut-ins who make up her rabid fan base, I know that Lady GaGa is not blazing some sort of new path here but, rather, is trodding down the same dull superhighway of anti-Christian imagery that’s been going on forever.  I was around when Madonna did the same crappy song a quarter century ago, except back then it was called “Like a Prayer.” 

Poor Rebecca Black has gotta be sitting there pondering the unfairness of all the dissing she’s endured and thinking “Heck, I’m only fourteen.  I have an excuse!”  At least “Friday” has no pretensions – it’s just a terrible, terrible pop song.  But Lady GaGa thinks she’s making a statement, and the problem is that there are millions of mindless nimrods out there who probably agree – though none of them could articulate just what the statement is with any greater specificity than some lame self-empowerment mantra like “I gotta be who I am in order to be the most me I can be!”

Again, I remind you that these quarter-wits can, or soon will be able to, vote.  And many of them have or will breed. 

I’m not angry at Lady GaGa exploiting my religion to sell records – it’s not like some future musical footnote who delights her dimwitted fans by dressing in a gown made of rib-eyes is going to do to Christianity what the Romans, the Moors and the liberal wing of the Democratic party have been unable to do. 

No, I’m bored, and I’m disgusted with her fans who settle for so little.  Lady GaGa – geez, I even hate writing out that ridiculous moniker – is merely another in a long line of pompous “artists” who try to provoke…badly… and end up just being tedious.  Great, Gaga, you played off some Bible verses – what else ya got? 

You know, the Sex Pistols blew minds because they attacked a target that could and would actually fight back.  When they cranked out “God Save the Queen,” they were taking on (among other things) a society’s ridiculous embrace of the bizarre concept of royalty – and it was risky.  People in Britain liked the monarchy – Johnny and Sid and the gang weren’t just risking their record deal and airplay but they stood the real chance of getting their punk asses kicked.  You think if Bobbie Law had decided to put a little scrutiny on the Pistols’ lifestyle they couldn’t have found enough to lock the boys up for a couple of decades? 

—–

“Anarchy In the UK” wasn’t just a publicity stunt (although it absolutely was that too; Malcolm McLaren rules) – it was reality.  In contrast, Lady GaGa is merely a little girl playing dress-up blasphemy.  The biggest “risk” she’s running is a scathing press release from the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue fulminating impotently as usual about this latest industry “outrage.”  He’s the go-to guy for entertainment sites when some pretentious twerp tries to cash in by trashing the church – he ought to demand a percentage off the back end. 

“Judas” is not just a terrible song – it’s so very much less.  It is pathetic posturing by a “nonconformist” who conforms exactly to every preconceived notion of the liberal elite about religion, about culture and about everything else.  The only way Lady GaGa could ever blow my mind is if she wore an Ayn Rand costume onstage and sang about looking for John Galt. 

As for mining the Christian imagery, well, you’d think that mother-lode would be running a bit dry by now after a few decades of every would-be transgressive tunester tossing some cross/rosary/nun iconography into his or her or s/his videos.  Yawn.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe she really does want to provoke, to take a real risk, to make a real statement about real repression.  So I eagerly await Lady GaGa’s next big hit featuring a bunch of burka-clad women casting off the clothes that symbolize their oppression while gay Muslim men throw stones back at the savage primitives who would murder them.  She can title the song, “See, I’m Not Just a Hypocritical Poser Who Takes On Only Targets That I Know Will Never, Ever Do Anything About It.” 

Yeah, that’ll happen.