Sam Smith is a gender nonconforming person with insane theatrical talent and the singing voice to match it. He performed at The Grammy’s as the devil while a transgender woman performed with him. She was in a cage. Reflecting the lyrics of the blockbuster hit they were singing called Unholy. It was a provocative performance that had even the most devout fans shuddering. It was exactly what these people meant it to be. The reaction was immediate from the far right. It was also entirely predictable.

Ted Cruz: “This…is…evil” 

Ben Shapiro: “Satan is hot right now” meaning in popular culture, not hell 🙂

There are more by others but I will let you Google them if you want to because these really smart guys are apparently entirely unaware of the lyrics and the intent that the performance be a mirror staring back at their tribe of hypocrites. Consider the first line,

Mummy don’t know daddy’s getting hot
At the body shop, doing something unholy

Think of the plethora of “daddy’s” out there who actually ARE doing this. It doesn’t take long and the list of “holy” men preaching, teaching and discipling others in the ways of Jesus are actually among the daddy’s getting hot at the body shop doing something unholy. Cruz and Shapiro, both very intelligent men dropped their brains and went forward only with their reactive emotion. With their angst all aglow about this performance, they don’t even realize it’s talking about those in this world who are the very ones who supported and elected Donald J. Trump. If anyone’s daddy frequented a place like Smith’s body shop, it was him. Imagine the stories Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr. could tell. The guy was a great friend with Jeffrey Epstein! Let us not forget the Matt Goetz’s of the GOP and others like him who vocally lead the moral crusade for righteousness while living very different lives themselves. Apparently, that’s all just fine as long as you don’t dress up like Satan and put on a provocative performance to showcase and expose it to the world.

The Grammy performance wasn’t about Sam Smith or Kim Petras. It was about these guys and as always they totally missed it. The fire was just too hot for them.

A lucky, lucky girl
She got married to a boy like you
She’d kick you out if she ever, ever knew
‘Bout all the – you tell me that you do
Dirty, dirty boy
You know everyone is talking on the scene
I hear them whispering ’bout the places that you’ve been
And how you don’t know how to keep your business clean

When I read these lyrics I immediately think of a guy like the Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell Jr. who found nothing but open arms in the GOP. American women have endured the misogynistic paradigm of Trump and his enablers for so long that we still throw up a bit when his name is mentioned. And for the GOP intellectuals reading this… – we do not literally throw up anymore than Sam Smith is the literal devil. Think metaphor.

Sam Smith and Kim Petras MEANT to provoke. They meant to speak truth to the obscene power and its stench of hypocrisy. Art is often provocative when it embodies a truth we are otherwise unwilling to see. Sadly, those who most needed the message of Unholy missed it entirely.

Imagine with me for just a moment that Ted Cruz or Ben Shapiro and others realized what this was about. Imagine that after having seen the Grammy performance, they found themselves sobered and contrite realizing that this unholiness thrives in their midst and that they have the power to address it. Imagine that if they saw the human beings Sam Smith, Kim Petras and the others not as satanic but as the whole people they actually are instead of nonbinary and trans subhumans. It would be a different world.

Maybe someday.