Given to people who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” the Presidential Medal of Freedom is one of the highest honors that can be given to a civilian by the United States government. Since 1963, the President has presented around 600 Medals, to religious leaders, artists, scientists, athletes, political figures, journalists, Bill Cosby and others. Given the more childlike instincts of our current POTUS (refresher: he just recently on Twitter called Adam Schiff, an actual elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives, “Adam Schitt”), if you had to guess to whom Trump would give medals at his first Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, who would it be? If you said, “Santa, Jesus, Elvis and Babe Ruth,” you got two right. Not that Ruth and Presley aren’t worthy, it’s just so very representative of our current prez (Trump did also give Medals to people like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Senator Orrin Hatch). Were there other awkward, WTF moments at the ceremony? Of course. Doctor/philanthropist Miriam Adelson scored a Medal, and it absolutely in no way had anything at all to do with her and her husband Sheldon giving millions of dollars to the Trump campaign (nor the $5 million donation to his inauguration committee) in 2016. Also, if you’ve heard Trump freestyle-riff on historical events (or most other forms of facts and reality), you know he is prone to making errors. When rambling about why Elvis was great, Trump decided to go off-script and talk about his own personal connection to Presley, claiming to have witnessed Elvis in concert at a hotel in Las Vegas in the ’70s. Trump vividly shared how fans were “ripping the place apart” and “screaming,” and then he used “one of the great memories of all time” (self-proclaimed) to recall the announcer officially declaring the show over by uttering over the P.A. that famous line: “Elvis has left the house.” (It’s actually “Elvis has left the building,” but cut the president some slack — he’d been working on that sick “Adam Schitt” burn for days.) FYI, he flubbed facts or lied about Babe Ruth, as well.
WARM: These Punks Not Dead
For so many reasons, it feels wrong to say D.C. Punk legends Minor Threat “broke the internet,” but the band certainly triggered a rush of “the feels” for hardcore fans recently, and they did it with, of all things, an Instagram post. Ian MacKaye, Lyle Preslar, Brian Baker and Jeff Nelson recently recreated the 1985 Salad Days EP cover photo, a black-and-white shot from nearly 35 years ago of the musicians sitting on the porch of the early headquarters (a house) of Dischord Records, the indie label MacKaye and Nelson founded in 1980. Baker posted the 2018 pic with the caption “Senior Threat.” Apparently, the photo led to some excited chatter about Minor Threat actually reuniting as a musical entity. If you were one of the chatterers, you should do a little research on Minor Threat, MacKaye, Dischord, Fugazi, et al. It will never happen.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Brian Baker (@brianbakers) on Nov 16, 2018 at 5:32pm PST
COLD: Mariah Meets Kaep
On Nov. 16, Pop superstar Mariah Carey popped into New York radio station Hot 97 for an interview and while there she bumped into an NFL star, had a photo taken with him and posted it on Instagram. No biggie, right? Well, Carey happened to take the photo with the one football player (well, maybe besides OJ) that would make it a biggie — Colin Kaepernick. In the caption, Carey said it was “such an honor” to meet Kaepernick, and you probably know exactly what happened next. Predictably, while some followers wrote supportive comments on the post, others loudly complained about Kaepernick because of his role as a leader of the silent NFL protests against racial injustice and police brutality in America. Carey must not have gotten the memo from Nike about avoiding any and all association with Kaepernick; after the QB was featured in a Nike ad campaign earlier this year, conservatives and Donald Trump fans (who, for some strange reason, are the only ones angry about Kaepernick’s protests) burned their shoes and socks and vowed never to buy Nike products again. (The misguided pretzel logic behind the Kaepernick hate is that because the kneeling is done at games during the National Anthem, it means the players hate America and the troops and hot dogs and bald eagles.) The right-wing protests, of course, worked and Nike completely went out of business within two weeks, so Mariah is likely to issue a retirement announcement any day now, since the hundreds of thousands of people who are both diehard fans of Carey and Trump will no longer buy/stream her music or go to her concerts or "heart" her Facebook posts. Oh wait — apparently, Nike’s sales went up after the Kaepernick ad.
View this post on InstagramSuch an honor to meet @kaepernick7 today!
A post shared by Mariah Carey (@mariahcarey) on Nov 16, 2018 at 12:10pm PST
