On Jan. 28 the Grammys were broadcasted live to the world. The annual ceremony is the biggest televised celebration of music in the world, and as a result is quite the platform for political messages. However, unlike the Golden Globes held just weeks prior the Grammys weren’t heavily focused on politics and activism. For the most part, it was moderately tame with only the occasional political message from attendees like Alicia Keys and Logic. There was one political skit embedded into the show, though, hosted by James Corden.
Corden introduces the skit by informing audience members that it is possible for a non-musician to win a Grammy by winning in the Spoken Word category. Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both won the award, so it should only be fitting that Trump be the subject of the next winner. Viewers then began to enjoy readings of selected passages of Michael Wolff’s controversial insider-look of the Trump administration ‘Fire and Fury.’ Celebrities like Cher, DJ Khalid, Snoop Dogg and Cardi B auditioned narrating the book, ending with 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
For those who have read some of my previous articles, it’s clear that I’m not exactly a big fan of our 45th president. His stubborn dedication to staying partisan to very right-wing politics and general buffoonery is unbecoming of the chief executor of the world’s most powerful nation. I have also however been incredibly critical of Hillary Clinton, and am of the belief that she would have also made a very poor president. During the campaign I found her to be flat out dangerous with some of her promises, like with implementing a no-fly zone over Syria. Recently I’ve come to come to be disgusted by the way she took advantage of in the DNC to subvert the American democratic process to unfairly beat Bernie Sanders. With that being said, I found Hillary Clinton’s inclusion in the ‘Fire and Fury’ skit to be very stupid.
The skit would have been fine if it was contained to the celebrities. I found Cardi B to be especially entertaining. ‘Fire and Fury’ has too many problems to ignore being recognized by influential politicians. It’s really hard to accept everything in the book as the fact of the matter when it has its fair share of errors. Such claims in the book, like Trump not knowing who John Boehner is, can be disputed by tweets made by Trump back in 2015. Politifact has also pointed out that the book has a very hard time naming sources and providing evidence. Anecdotes of various crazy events across the White House are written down, but sometimes the reader isn’t told how Wolff came to know that these things happened. Is Wolff there for all of the stories that he tells? Does Trump tell Wolff?
So when Hillary Clinton comes onto a televised award show for popular music to read passages from a book that lacks transparency and credible sources by any journalistic standard against an opponent that she lost the presidency to despite having 30+ years of political experience compared to his zero, it comes across as bitter and petty to me. I understand that it’s just entertainment and that the end goal is to get a laugh, but by jumping on the “bash Trump” bandwagon in such an undignified matter screams childishness to me, which is not a good look to have when you’re trying to make Trump look like the dumb one.
It also comes across as an attempt to build Hillary up as the president that should have been, and I find that to be incredibly dangerous in light of all the flaws that we should not ignore just because she doesn’t tweet like an idiot. As far as I’m concerned, she’s still responsible for the most egregious betrayal of our democracy this past election cycle by essentially paying the DNC to not give Bernie Sanders the light of day, a controversy which has mountains of evidence to its credit instead of the much more covered conspiracy theory of Trump directly colluding with the Russian government. It’s incredibly troubling that we’re willing to ignore that and cheer this corrupt politician on simply because we’re all trying to laugh at Trump.