My first thought upon discovering this was to wonder when the last time was that I read politics on a Sunday morning without wondering in the back of my mind if somebody had dropped acid into my Diet Dr. Pepper. I guarantee you that since mid-2015 or so it started getting strange and by mid-2016 — well, you remember.
John Hinckley was always an inexplicable character. He was the sibling in an upscale, successful family that somehow couldn’t partake of a smorgasbord of advantages that most of us would have killed for. Hinckley is my age peer and he’s also a Denverite, (as was I the first 26 years of my life) so when he attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981 he got my attention on a lot of levels. We were both young and he didn’t know what it was to struggle, as I did, but on the other hand, while I was putting myself through college and building some kind of a life, Hinckley was off in a dream world of his own, descending the dark dark ladder of mental illness.
He co-opted the movie Taxi Driver as his personal fantasy to live in and he modeled himself into some manifestation of Travis Bickle that was baffling, to put it mildly.
Now Hinckley has become a musician, songwriter, singer. I’m not going to rip into his underwhelming talents here because if there’s one value I hold above all else, it’s never punch down. So with a bit of detachment, deference even, I submit to you John Hinckley, recording artist.
So he’s got one tempo, two chords, and six notes? In all events, he’s giving a concert. New York Post:
“Big news!! I will be performing on July 8 at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, NY,” he wrote in the tweet, which also noted that “special guests” would make appearances. “Get your tickets while you can.”
The show was confirmed in a post on the hotel’s Instagram Stories. A link on the ticket site Venue Pilot offers a ticket price is $20 for the 8 p.m. show.
It was unclear whether the July gig would be Hinckley’s first-ever live public performance.
Scenic Presents — a Brooklyn concert promotion company that is handling the show and also tweeted the news — declined a request for comment from The Post, which also reached out to the hotel for a statement.
Responses to his announcement included people asking him to book shows in cities including Boston and Chicago and inquiring whether shirts and other merchandise are available — just like for any other touring artist.
Hinckley is the saddest of souls because he never found himself. A lot of people don’t, but most of them don’t explode in such a public and reprehensible manner. He messed up his life in a big way as a young man. Say what you will about his limited musical skills, at least he’s doing something productive.
Just another example of that strange land where politics and show biz intersect and the strange beings that live there.
A convicted criminal blissfully unaware of his own lack of talent and convinced that he has some?
Bound to turn up very soon as a Republican candidate for something, somewhere.
I would wager that after 40 years in mental care and therapy that Mr. Hinkley is saner than 50% of one political party in this nation and saner than 100% of the other.