I am not going to pretend that I know all the nuances of the first black woman to be appointed the Librarian of Congress, Ms. Carla Diane Hayden, and the outrageously talented singer and musician Lizzo’s conspiracy to pull slave owning founding father James Madison’s 200+ year old crystal flute out of whatever dusty box it had been exiled to in the Library of Congress and play a few notes on it, in concert, while simultaneously promoting her demonstrably popular message of body shape positivity in her lingerie.

Given that the main source of income for an 18th century slaver involved exploitation of black women’s bodies to produce children and thus income, I do suspect that there was some co-mingling of symbologies involved in the exploit, and possibly a bit of giggling in the planning of it, and, for the record I am fine with both.

What I am not O.K. with is the pearl-clutching, whinging objections to the harmless but pointed bit of political musical theater encapsulated in Lizzo’s performance by so called conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, who are very supportive of GOP efforts to tear Madison’s Constitution down from the figurative living room wall of America and wipe their asses with it, but oh so offended when a black woman plays an old flute.

Just this week, we had an appointed-for-life Republican Justice to the Supreme Court saying that our 1st Amendment rights do not extend to calling him and his fellow conservatives hacks and illegitimate when they display complete contempt for the electorate they purport to serve.

And we had another Republican appointed Judge abetting the very miscreant that appointed her to her post in his attempts to burglarize classified documents from the White House and lie about the agency investigating him, accusing them of planting evidence during the search that recovered said documents, with no proof of the act offered.

And just yesterday the wife of a Republican appointed SCOTUS judge smirked her way into sworn testimony before a Congressional Committee investigating an insurrection and swore, again under oath, that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, offering no proof, cause there isn’t any, of the misdeed.

Which act, I ask you, is more harmful to the Republic, the wry send-up and puncturing of the overblown mythos of American history by two accomplished black women or the deliberate attempts to dismantle Madison’s carefully constructed representative democracy?

I know on which side of this debate I stand.

Here is a clip of Lizzo fully dressed demonstrating her mastery of the instrument.

Enjoy:

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12 COMMENTS

  1. It’s amusing to me: the other name for trills, in music, is “shakes”, and she does them very well, in both senses. (They’re not easy, either kind.)

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  2. Wow, she’s good. Don’t listen to these rogue sites saying (Every time you share this it makes a right-wing talking head cry.). As usual these outlet must be paid to put out articles trying to separate us. They’re getting paid to start a civil war. Don’t fall for there lies, these writers are paid to separate us.

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    • She is good. I wish I could have a closer look at that flute. It is fascinating that it is made of crystal. I have never seen such a thing before. I expect it is pretty close to priceless.

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      • In the 18th and early 19th centuries there were lots of flutes made of crystal and china, along with the wood that had been popular before. The silver concert flute we know today was invented by a guy named Boehm in 1851 and totally took over the flute market. Before that there were all kinds of variations in key systems and body material. So one thing about Lizzo playing that flute is I’m pretty sure the fingering isn’t quite the same as a modern flute, but she rips on it anyway.
        The flute is probably worth a fair amount cuz A. it belonged to Madison B. glass and china flutes from that era don’t survive as well as wood. It’s probably not equivalent to a Stradivarius.
        Hearing her play it in that lovely space is cool, but I’d like to hear a recording of her with it made with a good microphone. Instead of the “shitty, tiny microphone” that’s found in phones and laptops.

    • Oh, please, you right-wing troll. Give us all a break. For that ONE tweet posting the “makes a right-wing talking head cry” comment, there are hundreds of right-wing sites pushing the “make a lib cry” (as well as “own the libs”) line. And if you made ANY effort at being honest, you’d acknowledge that it’s the right-wing that’s telling the lies and trying to separate us.

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      • Madison’s more likely weeping at the idea that HIS writing has been so horribly bastardized by a bunch of idiots who like to pretend they’re following his words but who really prefer “re-interpreting” his words in ways they “think” he intended to say.

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  3. I write it off as ugly old white men who’s only interaction with black folks is they serve them their dinner, while secretly wishing a black woman would play their ‘flute’, you know, like the black slave women were forced to do. They long for the good old days when they ran the world the way they wanted with impunity.

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