A (10:02)
So the bottom line is this gross inequality that is part of our declining American empire is actually a thing. So we know the war in Iran is not going well. Oil and gas and food prices and fertilizer prices are through the roof. There's no end in sight to the war. We don't see any end. Donald Trump's to give him time. It could be an endless war like Afghanistan or Iraq for all we know. We have no idea. Also, rest in peace Spirit Airlines, which has gone out of business, the low cost airline could no longer stay in business. There are these creepy pictures of all the downed planes that are just Sitting there in the parking lot. It's done. Also, rest in peace to the 15,000 jobs, many of which were people of color who are now unemployed. Meanwhile, when it comes to the inequality, our troops who are being forced to fight this war in Iran, are basically eating slop. We've got this picture, Jason, if you could put it up, of the nasty food that's being served to our troops. This is the kind of slop that they're eating while they're being asked to fight a war in Iran. And while they're eating that and regular people can't afford groceries, Donald Trump and the oligarchs are living quite large. So Trump had his fancy dinner last week with King Charles and Camilla at which all six right wing members of the Supreme Court attended on the same day that they gutted the Voting Rights Act. None of the liberals attended. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. But it was sort of a perfect juxtaposition. Everyone's sitting around a fancy dinner at the White House with an actual king and a fake king, all laughing it up while they were gutting our ability to vote out the people who are harming us. And as we speak, right now, even as we speak, speaking of inequality and wealth, all the celebs, not all of them, but a bunch of celebrities, are lining up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Met Gala, which is being hosted this year by model Ashley Graham, actor Lala Anthony and model Cara Develany. And I think I'm pronouncing that wrong. Delveen or Delveen. I think it's Delevingne and influencer Emma Chamberlain, who is on the red carpet. And this year's theme is costume art, and fashion is art. That's happening literally right now. Now, if you go over last year, Jason, you can put it up a seven. Remember last year? Remember where we were? Remember last year when we were all so interested and excited about the Met Gala and the theme was about the black dandy, and you had all of these incredible costumes and all of these incredible looks and Whoopi Goldberg and her top hat and the whole thing. And the whole theme really was celebrating black culture. Just at the time that a white supremacist regime was taking place, it was sort of like an in your face. Although it had been pre planned, of course, in theory, Kamala Harris could have been the president, could have been celebrating this very black moment in American history. But instead it was happening at the time when Donald Trump was taking over. And so it was seen as sort of this incredible artistic statement that in the midst of the entrance of an anti black administration, there was still black joy and black fashion, black style and hope. And that's what it felt like last year when we were watching the Met Gala. It felt like it was, it was a response, it was a pushback to all the bad things that we were seeing happening. And the art was saying no art was saying that there's still hope, there's still beauty and there's still non white possibility in America. And that's what kind of that Met Gala felt like last year. Well, not this year. This year Palpatine is not being opposed. It definitely feels like writ large American culture, the sort of American cultural galaxy is bending the knee. It feels like at a time when we are facing the nadir of voting rights for African Americans and Latinos, but it's really black folks that are being targeted. Let's just be clear. This is about eviscerating black power and with it any chance that the south could ever produce another black member of Congress or produce any opposition to the empire. That's happening at the same time that a lot of black cultural icons and people who we thought of as woke cultural icons are literally at the Met Gala celebrating very expensive fashion. So, you know, this year they're the megastar co chairs, Beyonce, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, who serve alongside Vogue global editor, Vogue global editorial director, I should say, and Cloud Bob Colonial enthusiast Anna Wintour will share space not just with other big names on the host committee. YSL creative director Anthony Vaccarello, YSL campaign star Zoe Kravitz, host committee members Angela Bassett, Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Misty Copeland, Sarah Sam Smith, Teyana Taylor, Asia Wilson, you name it. They're just tons of very popular celebrities in attendance. But they're not just sharing space with one another. They're also sharing space with Amazon oligarch, Washington Post destroyer and Trump MAGA fanboy Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who happen to be the honorary chairs. And it's not just like that pair of MAGA oligarchs who are invading the annual house of iconic fashion and culture. Let me read you this from the Observer. Quote, a growing relationship between the Met Gala and tech executives is a new phenomenon in terms of the broader history of the gala, which was really about fashion. Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Observer. Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the Met Gala began as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's. Costume Institute, attended primarily by New York City socialites, it was a far cry from today's global spectacle. The shift toward celebrity accelerated in the 1970s under former Vogue editor in chief Diana Vreeland, and by the time Wintour took over as chair in 1995, the event was well on its way to becoming a cultural juggernaut. Wintour recently stepped down as editor in chief of Vogue US but remains its global editorial director. As the Met Gala's profile has written, so has the price of entry. Tickets, available only to guests approved by Wintour herself, cost $100,000, while tables start at $350,000. As tech companies have amassed enormous wealth, they've increasingly stepped in to foot the bill in exchange for cultural cachet. This year's table buyers reportedly include Amazon, OpenAI, Meta and Snap. I'm calling it the Tech Gala because so much tech has gotten involved over the last decade, Amy O', Dell, the author of the 2022 renter biography Anna, told Observer. Over the years, the price of admission has become so high that it's just like who else can afford it? From the New York Times now Opposition to the Bezos started almost immediately after they were announced as financial sponsors in February and comes amid a surging anti rich sentiment nationwide and in New York City, the event's liberal home. The outrage seemingly gained momentum after the city's newly elected mayor, Zorhan Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, declared in mid April that he would skip the gala, breaking with many of his predecessors saying that his focus is on affordability. And in the weeks leading up to the event on Monday, an avid anti Bezos campaign has erupted on New York's streets, in subways and online, where social media users have described the event as the Amazon Prime Gala, or Bezos Ball. Reports of skittish stars and upset fashionistas have peppered tabloid pages, including rumors of some past guests steering Clear. A guerrilla activist group called Everyone Hates Elon, a reference to another controversial billionaire, Elon Musk, has been calling for a boycott of the event with a steady drumbeat of eye catching campaigns around the city, including plastering posters on subway cars and bus stops on Friday in a nod to complaints by Amazon workers of having to skip bathroom breaks and urinate in bottles. Instead, the group placed close to 300 bottles of fake urine inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So Mayor Mohamdani and his wife are not attending. Neither is fashion icon Zendaya, who usually provides probably the fashion moment every year. Last year, actually, Diana Ross was probably the big fashion woman, but she's always a huge icon. Although her spokesman did not specify as to why she's not going. She just won't be there. Neither will Meryl Streep, who is the star of Devil Wears Prada. But she also doesn't normally attend, so you really can't read much into that. But with so many, you know, cultural icons attending, it definitely does feel like cultural leaders are normalizing. Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman and Meta and all the rest. Right. It feels like the tech oligarchy is being normalized inside the Hollywood world. And, you know, that's a thing. It's a thing that's happening. And maybe that's not intentionally what people are doing, but it's what it definitely feels like that, that the idea of these maga tech oligarchs is not offensive to other people who are rich and who are famous. It doesn't necessarily bother them. And I think the truth is, is that rich and famous people, they're going to rich and famous people is what they're going to do. They're going to. They're going to do high fashion events. They're going to go to events where they sit with other rich people and sit at their tables and kiki with them and go to their $50,000 or $50 million weddings. How much was Jeff Bezos? What, $50 million? They were like, we're going to that, you know, lots of stars you love are going to do it. And I think we presume that these people are woke because we become so used to them, you know, lending their music to Beyonce or campaigning for her. I mean, for Beyonce to Kamala Harris and promoting her and being on her campaign trail and, you know, seeming to be woke. And we also got used to, I think over the decades, celebrities doing things like funding, you know, Dr. King's movement, which Harry Belafonte and other celebrities did, or appearing at the march on Washington and sort of this overt, you know, wokeness or writing songs like Mississippi Goddamn right. Like that is a thing that we got used to. And so art has always been seen as liberal and woke. And I think for really good reason, because in many ways it was, you know, the sort of the revolution included a soundtrack that was folk musicians and blues musicians and rock musicians and black and white musicians who were just considered liberals. When you go back to the jazz era, these were the people who were just in their own bodies fighting against segregation. There were people back in that era who would refuse to perform in front of segregated audiences and made huge waves because of it. So even the right has been very clear that art and artists are liberal and that art itself is a liberal thing. And it's one of the reasons they so crave to be a part of it. It's one of the reasons they so desire to have a piece of it or to own it. It's why the right got so thrilled when they had Kanye. Because they're like, see, now we have the culture. We're not stuck with just Kid Rock and other whack ass musicians like him. Like, we've got cool musicians. They don't want to be with each other. They want to be with us. They want to be with cultural cool, and they want to own cultural cool. They want the culture, and they normally can't have the culture, and they're mad about it. They hate the fact that they can't own it and have a piece of it, and they want it. And, and the problem is now that we're not in the 60s, you know, we're not in that. We're not in an era where that sort of culture, Even Michael Jackson would make statements. You know, people were like, well, he's turning white, but he was black. You know, I mean, his statements were like, I am for my P. I am for black people. It's a thing I'm for. Right. But the, the reality is things have changed so much. Yeah. People putting, talking in the chat about Ted Nugent. Right? Ted Nugent is, is an insane person who allegedly was, you know, being. And after like teenage girls who were like preteens and stuff, so ill. But these people are angry that they can't be in the culture. Donald Trump is mad about it. If Donald Trump could hang up with George Clooney, he'd do it in 10 seconds. That's what he really wants. He wants to be around cultural cool, and he wants to be considered part of cool culture like he used to be in the 90s, and he wants that back. And so being feeling locked out of the culture is part of why they'll create, like, alternatives, like their own fake versions of Hollywood. Breitbart.com was actually founded by a wannabe filmmaker, Andrew Breitbart, who was angry that conservatives, in his view, couldn't get access to Hollywood and were shunned in Hollywood. And so he created a website whose goal was to create a parallel version of cultural cool, a parallel Hollywood. And they're still doing that. You know, Ben Shapiro's outfit is they make movies because they want to have a parallel version of cultural cool. And so there is an anger on the right that they don't have access to that and they want it. And now what's happened is because now we're in an era where celebrities are actually billionaires, where they too are billionaires or where they can aspire to be billionaires, they just have to catch. Have one great brand catch on. And they're billionaires too. And so now their circle of friends includes other billionaires like Jeff Bezos, and there's not really a real cultural prohibition amongst them to hang out with them or going to their weddings or hanging out with them or being at the Jeff at the Met Gala with them. And so if Jeff Bezos is now associated with the Met Gala, then the Met Gala is associated with maga. They're all together now, and that's what it is. And there's just been a normalization of that merger. And, you know, not to obsess about it, but I am sad about it, because it definitely feels like there are not. We just expect when the Oscars happen, that everyone who gets up is going to make some statement on behalf of immigrants or make some statement on behalf of the oppressed. But we maybe are expecting too much. It may be that we have to look towards something other than celebrity culture to fight for our rights or fight for us. And maybe these people are super woke, or maybe they just don't pay attention to politics. Maybe they actually just don't pay attention to it at all. And they're not paying attention. They just want to dress up. And it's just a fashion thing. And if, like, the great, you know, if their favorite fashion houses invite them, they're just gonna go. But yes, as Joshua Underwood said in the chat on YouTube, Maga kills everything. Definitely the taint of MAGA makes the Met Gala less fun for me. Everything MAGA touches dies. Everything MAGA touches is less cool, it's less fun, it's less interesting. And I will just in my mind, for me, last year's Met Gala was peak Met Gala, and everything after it is just whack. It's too magatated. It's too MAGA associated. If Jeff Bezos is in it, I don't want it. I'm just being honest. That's just me. If MAGA is in it, I don't want it. Jeff Bezos is running it. Do we really want it? People saying MAGA is almost dead. Yeah, MAGA is definitely withering on the vine. And it'll be interesting to see, as Latasha Brown says is when they come black because in the end, cultural cool really was created in many ways, is still curated, particularly by black women. And if black women don't consider something to be cool, it's hard to hold up the cultural cool without us. And they've tried to exclude us and siphon us out of every space. Make it harder for black writers to get on writing teams in Hollywood, make it harder for black creators to get their projects made, make more white and fewer black characters in programs and in movies. They're trying to rinse us out, but they still want our culture. It's the way Brooklyn ran. All the black people out, gentrified the town, but they still have a giant poster of a giant painting of Biggie so that they can have, like, the slight flavor of black without black humans, without black living people. Because at the end, they still want cultural cool, and they still know that comes through black people. And they still want it. They still want it. They took rock and roll for a reason, because they wanted to be associated with that cultural cool. And they. And rather than invent it, they just took the one. The black people made the same thing with country music, did the same thing with jazz. If you go on Apple and say, download, give me the. The Apple Jazz catalog, they just give you a lot of white creators and almost nobody black. They're like, we'll just take that, you know, and all of a sudden, in vogue, an Afro is a cloud, Bob. Like magic. Everything gets appropriated and then reduced in genuine cultural cool. It's. I'm sad about. Because I think the Met Gala is a. It's a worthy cause to raise money to restore costumes and art. Art is very worthy as a part of our cultural conversation. But if. Now what we're saying is that MAGA is allowed in our spaces that we consider to be part of the culture. I don't know. Yeah, I am serious about that. Is this loudly Napoleon? Yes. I tried to download the jazz collection on Apple music and it gave me maybe Ella Fitzgerald and a lot of white artists. So make art, not war. Yeah. And we. And then look, somebody says, rights. Cornrows are scalp braids, right? All of a sudden. Because they want the culture. They want the culture. They just want the culture to be under their control. That's what the right is. The right is an appropriator. The right is not a creator. Conservatism isn't creativity. It's appropriation and colonization, and it's aggressive colonization. It is what it is. So there you go. And yes. No, Zendaya is Not going to the Met Gala. Somebody says, stop glamorizing the wealthy while Bill find the poor. That is very true. I think that the mayor of New York City might have it right, that maybe we've all been to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and maybe it is time to really think about what's really important in our culture. And what's really important might just, just might not be a fabulous costume gala. It might be making sure that ordinary people can afford their rent and food and not go to endless war and that our troops don't have to eat slop and have Israel order them to go and die in Iran because Bibi Netanyahu needs to stay president for life. Maybe that. And we love fashion, but a lot of people can't even afford fashion right now. No one can afford anything. There's no spirit airlines. There are a lot of people who can't go. They can't even go on a decent vacation that they've slaved away for because they can't afford an airline ticket because whatever airlines are still flying. There's no more spirit. And it sounds like JetBlue might be next because everything is so unaffordable. And we're in Gotham. We're here in New York City right now. And New York is, you know, New York is Gotham City. And it does feel like, increasingly it is the galaxy and it is a city of villainy. And that's why we have a mayor that is trying to reverse that. And that might be the cultural move we want. That might be cultural cool is caring about the people who can't have and don't have and not about this. So that's my rant of the day. I just had to get that out of my system. Welcome to new member Sandra Sharif. Thank you very much, and welcome to Team tjri. So let's move on. Before I do that, though, I do want to let you know that, you know, doing independent media is. It is an exciting thing. It is a challenging thing. 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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure or prevent any disease. Okay, so moving on. So last week, I've gotten my Met Gala rant out of my system, so thank you for bearing with me for that. Now, last week, this exchange between Jessica Waters, who is the senior Scholar in residence at American University, and a representative named Brandon Gill of Texas. He's a Dartmouth graduate, of course, and he's a former editor of the Dartmouth Review, which is the sort of right wing rag that a lot of Dartmouth. That a lot of sort of right wing stars have come from. He also happens to be the youngest member of the Republican caucus. So basically, he's his caucus's aoc, if you can believe that. This exchange went viral. And here it is. This is B1. That abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.