The Big Stink Over Lil Nas

A Biblical Breakdown of MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name): 

& Why Lil Nas X Is More Saint than Satanette

What is blasphemy & did MONTERO commit it?

To blaspheme is to commit an offense or sacrilege against God. It’s fair to say that MONTERO offers no direct offense to God.

MONTERO, the video that is, is all about Satan. Satan is Christendom’s ultimate villain – the symbol of all that’s evil, vile, and unholy. Taking liberties with Satan, it could be argued, could be seen as taking liberties with Scripture – because by doing so for a literalist, you’re not taking the Good Book nearly seriously enough. 

As you may’ve heard, Scripture has some things to say about homosexuality. And for a tradition that’s as doctrinally anti-sex – Hello? Circumcision? (FYI, in removing the foreskin the boy loses 20% of his member’s nerve endings and sensitivity) – and virulently anti-woman as Christianity, and since homosexual sex is about sex for its own sake and not about being fruitful and multiplying, well, you can see the problem. 

The fact that MONTERO is so open and assertive with its homoeroticism, that it also tripped the ire of Christians should’ve surprised no one.

What about the outrage, then?

Projectile eye-bleeding from the graying Reactionary punditry, that was to be expected. But what of the Millennial Barbarians of the Junior Punditry like Candace Owens, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson? (Owens gave Nas credit for destroying the youth of America.) While their slang may be fresher (if awkward), their ideology appears to be just as fusty as their redneck Preparation H Generation grandparents.

Nas has been accused of creating the MONTERO controversy intentionally and strategically. Politico said he “flipped the book of Conservatives’ culture war playbook” and beat them at their own game. Despite the intensity of the caterwauling, the reactions of the Outrage Industrial-Complex have only backfired. Not only did the opponents get served a full Twitter roasting, their whinging fueled enough interest in the song to make it the #1 single upon release. (And as you may’ve heard, Nas also did SNL.) 

By any standard of Cancel Culture, the hissy was a total fail.

Who is Satan?

All Abrahamic traditions have some version of an evil arch-character. In Christianity, Lucifer is a non-physical entity that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God or typically regarded as a metaphor for the yetzer hara, or “evil inclination” of mortals. In Christianity and Islam, the Devil is usually seen as either a fallen angel or a jinn.

The closest the Christian Bible gets of a description is from 2 Corinthians 11:14: “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” The surrounding verses refer to Satan as having human servants that disguise themselves as “apostles of Christ” and “servants of righteousness.” In context, these descriptions are referring to false teachers. (The Bible spends a lot of time gassing the competition.) Doesn’t this description imply that most faithful wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him?

For his part, Nas says was inspired by his own experience. In response to all the booloo and net rage, Nas posted this to Twitter: 

I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the [expletive] y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay. So i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves. 

So, why all the stink?

The anti-Nas reactions seem mostly like performative pissing down the blowhole. You wonder if anyone has been watching television or YouTube lately. Is it that Nas satirized Satan or that he gays it all up with the lap dance and a happy ending? Satan gets killed in the end. Why isn’t that a good thing? 

Conclusion: For religionists, a sacrilege against the very symbol of sacrilege is also a sacrilege. That’s so meta it’s dizzying.

Some Biblical Context: Why insulting Satan is a spitball at his employer

• According to the Bible, as the creator of all things, God also created Hell. God is the architect of EVERYTHING and boasts of creating the light and dark, peace and evil. It was also Him that installed Satan as His subcontractor – Chief Operating Officer of the Dirty Deeds and Punishments Department. Together, Satan and the Fallen Angels are God’s C-Suite. But ultimately it’s God who decides who goes down there (or wherever).
• As a Fallen Angel #1, Satans’s job description was to tempt humanity to sin. Then, when successful to that cause, mete out utterly heinous eternal punishments – again, according to his job description. Where does he do this? In the Lake of Fire – or Hell, Sheol, Gehenna – those places created by God.
• By seducing Satan, Nas is only repeating plots from Biblical stories like Salomé and King Herod – where a young woman seduces the king through dance – and Judith and Holofernes – where a beauty wines and cruises a general as part of her ruse to kill him.

Fun facts

• According to the Scripture of record (AKA as the Bible and Torah), a total of 2,821,364 deaths are specifically given in scripture as either directly manifested by God or carried out with his oversight or approval. 
• Satan kill count? Only 10. And if you add in the multitudes lost in The Flood, that makes for an estimate closer to 25 million. To also include other genocides, famines, various massacres, and all other cataclysms that YHWH watched with indifference from on high, the count gets closer to Thanos territory.
• By one estimate, somebody did the math and put the totals of Flood deaths at 40,000 to 1,067,000.
• Again, according to Scripture, God’s stats beat Satan’s kills by 227,037% – and that doesn’t even include women and children. (Go to the link and see a graph.)
• Nationally known radio pastor Alistair Begg described the dilemma Christians must have as followers of “the most loving person who has ever lived” (Christ) who also spoke “straightforwardly about the awfulness of hell.” A place, presumably, He could change if He so desired. But he doesn’t. 

Getting Under Todrick Hall's Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels

And Why – Like Your Boss, Teacher, & Parents – He’s an A**hole

The tea was spilled on Hall back in 2019, so I won’t waste time explaining. Here’s a refresher.

In brief: Todrick Hall was a contestant on American Idol in 2010. He was able to parlay that exposure into a successful YouTube presence. Then came a stint on Rupaul’s Drag Race and starring role in Kinky Boots in 2016. He claimed he aspired to be an LGBT role model. He released the first of three albums that year.

 

Then in 2019, it all started to unravel. People that’d worked for him began accusing him of all kinds of steaming mess. Said a former assistant: “I know every detail of his life including deliberate non-payment to people, racism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, online bullying, exploitation, illegal business practices…the list goes on.”

But in particular, this non-payment issue, coming at him from several accusers, is interesting. His cast must’ve swallowed their gum every time the refrain came around: I don’t work for free/that's the tea, hunty/so make it rain on me. Some of the video’s featured dancers went public with allegations of non-payment. Hall responded in January of 2020 claiming ignorance of the alleged non-payment. Hall responded by saying that the dancers making the accusations hadn’t been paid yet. 

A lawsuit brought against Hall for sexual harassment would be settled out of court.

So, Here's Why Hall, Like Most Authority Figures, Is an Asshole:

It’s The Human Power Dynamic Differential. (While undeniable, the phrase itself is something I  made up, but you get the idea.) The scale of the dynamic, the players, the culture – it doesn’t even matter. It could be two toddlers. The behaviors are the same.

The differential is the result of that dark sorcery that seizes otherwise good consciences whenever one gains power or advantage over another. The degrees of imbalance can even be slight. The important thing is perception. 

This dynamic can be expressed in endless ways: 

• by older siblings over younger 
• by parents that believe their children's lives should be an expression of their own 
• by bad teachers that hate their jobs or use shame as a form of control 
• by compulsively controlling lovers
• by contemptuous bosses
• by those with “boundary issues” 
• and at the tip-top of the toxic emotional slag heap – the police; and their ever-repeating toxic code that says a civilian’s life has a fraction of the value of their own – even less if that civilian is Black or some other PoC (but especially Black) 

Privilege spreads the poison. As does wealth.

Copious research supports this: People that drive expensive cars become arrogant, greedy drivers. People that overvalue their positions are less likely to be ethical and more likely to cheat. The Stanford Prison Experiment found that those with power became more authoritarian, more harassing, and more likely to inflict psychological torture against their otherwise peers. A study of bosses willing to @#$% everything up to make themselves look good. And even our tech is working against us: Algorithms are written to increase profits and efficiency at the expense of everyone else. (This explains Amazon.) An ethicist explains this as exception making — “believing that the rules that govern what is right and what is wrong does not apply to [the person with power]." They can still think it’s wrong for other people, just not for them.

Even in microdoses, it can be intoxicating. The basic seductiveness of “because I can” (or it’s parental variant, “because I said so”) is an entitlement too tempting to resist. There were stories of Bill Cosby, when he wasn’t committing more heinous offensives, using his authority to callously toy with the people at his disposal. Assistants, hotel staff, and anyone in his sway were made to watch him eat or tuck him into bed just “because he could.” One observer noted that in Cosby’s perverted vision, he thought people should’ve been honored to do his bidding. Harvey Weinstein had even cowed journalists into not reporting public outbursts with fear of reprisal. The examples are endless.

And, the Squishy Antidote

When people have the ability to empathize with other people, this doesn’t happen. They hold onto humanity over humiliation. When the mindful don’t get dope drips in their brains by exploiting others, they allow others to feel some drips of their own. For Todrick Hall, it took the exploitation of a cast and underlings to get the dope leaking. He may wear the heels, but it’s everyone else that’s going to tuck.

Maybe when enough people see value in other people’s positive experiences, maybe one day we can all sing together in a sort of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood Wakanda. 

But until then, the world won’t have room enough for too many tens:

I'm so fab, I'm gone with the wind bitch

Y'all six, seven, eight, nines, I'm a ten bitch

 

Song Reassignment Surgery; Bold Covers 7; An old Road gets new brick

 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John), 1973; Sara Bareilles (2013)

The brand of Sara Barielles is wringing out the kind soft rock pop you could imagine soundtracking the naps of sagging Millennials when their time comes. Her decorous mainstream-ness may be just the sort of nectar that was to attract the Grammy honeybees again and again – she’s been nominated eight times, won once; plus two Tony nominations. As a performer, her experience in theater (she wrote the hit musicals Waitress and SpongeBob SquarePants) and television must surely inform her seasoned and proficient performing skills. That musical theater wanders through the corridors of her voice comes as no surprise. VH1 gave her the 80th spot of their Top 100 Greatest Women in Music (2012).

What might not be expected from such institutional bonafides is an interpreter prepared to scorch the earth of the original and rebuild. Traditionally, Elton John’s work eludes easy covering – as if the maestro embedded his tunes with an unhackable code – his songs were always best left to the maestro himself. But Bareilles offers Road a significant repaving. Within a woman’s voice, the naïve protagonist’s first encountering the hard law of the jungle lofts the song’s purpose way beyond what was previously expected of the melody and chords. She births an entirely new character.

And all of this she does from her occupation in the middle-of-the-road. I’ve heard other work of hers and, based on her approach of her career’s deep cuts, this jewel is a ear-poking surprise.

Credit where it’s due.

Song Reassignment Surgery; Bold Covers 6

Rape Me (Nirvana), 1993: Tanya Tagaq (2016)

...voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead, they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth. 

Sam Cooke

Measure Tagaq as a truth genius. 

Listen to her TedTalk performance (below). Note the dervish intensity and human-to-animal sound spectrum ratio. If you can absorb her assault without your eyes guttering with tears, then your heart’s far sludgier than mine. Next, go to her version of Rape Me. 

Nirvana’s version – with Cobain’s lamentation on fame and as a victim of the zeitgeist – was the thesis; Tagaq writes the dissertation. 

In Tagaq’s mouth, Rape Me describes suffering

that’s less existential and far more literal: her whispers channel the agonies of ancestral generations and tortured contemporaries. And her whispers don’t just speak for the indigenous – as tragic and well-documented as their struggle has been – but for all women. Hear the heartbeat and the quiet restraint that imagines a victim’s solitude, soaked in toxic memories. Add to that whatever other tinglings you may get: patriarchy, parentage, class, duty, fear, etc. But there’s much more than rage at work here. Her registers, her guttural modulations, her sweetness and rage, the emotionality – her voice may be the chaotic psyche’s ultimate delivery system .

Tagaq says she didn’t begin throat singing herself until college. Though her indigenous culture had no history of throat singing, she’d re-engineer it to such a scale, it sounded like it was. And her record collection must be eclectic and edgy. Her approach ranges from uninhibited to feral. She’d first be introduced to a broader audience by another fellow warrior and vocal innovator, Björk. Tagaq would follow similar paths as her mentor’s but in an entirely different way. Both are aggressively elusive and hard reduce to something as simple as a category. Both sing with an intensity and commitment that is truly rare.

In the first video, see Björk and Tagaq join another aggressively elusive singer –
Mike Patton. 

In her TedTalk, Tagaq only sings. Her voice arrives from another plane entirely. Her throat astrally projects the spectrum of human emotional experience. Like a shaman from another dimension, she drops into a trance, channels voices, personalities, shadows, light, and other species. This is the kind of ecstatic performance Pentecostals dream of hacking but get nowhere near. She collects the essences of Yoko Ono, Shirley Temple, Diamanda Galas, Meredith Monk, Nina Hagen, the B-52s, throat and overtone singers, Asian traditions, Ornette Coleman's saxophone, animal and outer space noises. Her vocal palette, the colors and sounds at her disposal, are expansive enough to be seen from space.