“We have long lines to celebrate death, and short lines for voting. Something is missing. If you leave here today and don’t register to vote, you’re dishonoring Aretha.”
Amen.
R E S P E C T
(Could I be any more descriptive?)
”doppleganger of deceit and
deceitdeviance,”
Fixed.
Just because it was such a great moment …
Thank you, TPM for the cultural hero article. However, the article was a bit light.
There were certainly politics involved, clearly by the final eulogy of this 8-10 hour event.
Rev. Jasper Williams Jr. a megachurch pastor from Atlanta, apparently requested by Aretha, had these tidbits to say, which created a firestorm in social media:
“The straights need to respect the gays. The gays need to respect the straights.” [huh?]
“Where is your soul, black man? As I look in your house, there are no fathers in the home no more.”
“as proud, beautiful and fine as our black women are, one thing a black woman cannot do, a black woman cannot raise a black boy to be a man.”
“No, black lives do not matter,” Williams said. “Black lives will not matter, black lives ought not matter, black lives should not matter, black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves.”
Now, there may be a nugget of truth in some of those statements, but I posit it was not what Aretha intended, and a blatant Trumpism of her funeral.
Stevie Wonder saved the day thereafter with a few statements of “black lives matter. All lives matter.” What we need is love … intro to his early song, “I’ll be loving you always”
“We can talk about all the things that are wrong and there are many but the only thing that can deliver us is love. So what needs to happen today not only in this nation but throughout the world is that we need to make love great again,” Wonder said. “Because black lives do matter, because all lives do matter”
Pity I have to go to non-US websites to find this stuff.
Anyone know why the Obamas weren’t there? They sure had a good relationship with Aretha. The Clintons made both the Aretha and McCain funerals. I expected to see the Obamas at both of them as well.