Conservative media stars and far-right provocateurs found their latest outrage cycle this week when pop superstar Lizzo thrilled concertgoers by playing a 200-year-old crystal flute once owned by former President James Madison.
Rather than appreciate an accomplished and classically trained flutist showing off a priceless piece of American history to her fans, right-wing pundits seethed that Lizzo’s performance was an act of “soft totalitarianism” meant to “degrade our history.”
Prior to showing off the delicate instrument at a Tuesday night show in Washington, D.C., Lizzo was invited by the Library of Congress to check out its collection of more than 1,700 flutes—including the Madison one, which was given to the founding father in 1813 as a gift from French flute maker Claude Laurent.
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After trying out the flute, she was given permission to play it briefly during her concert this week, with the national library sending Capitol Police and staff as security to watch over the rare artifact. Sharing the history of the flute with her audience, the “Truth Hurts” singer let the crowd know she was “the first person to ever play it” and how “scared” she felt in doing so.
“It’s crystal. It’s like playing out of a wine glass, bitch, so be patient,” she said before carefully playing a note, causing the crowd to roar. Lizzo blew a few more notes, even tossing in her trademark twerk as she played.
“Bitch, I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s. We just made history tonight!” Lizzo excitedly declared while folding the flute over her head. “History is freaking cool!”
While much of the reaction online and in the media was positive, the usual gaggle of right-wing scolds and knee-jerk reactionaries jumped all over the Black megastar’s performance to suggest that it was indicative of a further decline in society due to wokeness.
“The Library of Congress really took out a 200-year old flute that belonged to James Madison just so Lizzo could twerk with it,” groused Greg Price, a former Daily Caller editor-turned-GOP operative. “They degrade our history and then call you racist if you actually value it.”
The Columbia Bugle, a popular MAGA social-media account, raged about the musician playing Madison’s crystal flute, declaring “we’re going to let Kid Rock crowd surf on Obama's presidential portrait” if and when Republicans retake the White House.
“A humiliation ritual. They don’t care about our history,” the Bugle wrote in another tweet. “They just want to mock and defile it.”
Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly, who has predicted the American right will soon “pick a fascist,” took the histrionics even further, contrasting the arrest of an anti-abortion activist for assault with Lizzo playing a crystal flute he very likely never knew existed before yesterday.
“If you can figure out the link between raiding the home of a peaceful man who offered to turn himself in and an anti-American singer twerking with James Madison’s flute, congratulations,” he posted. “You know what’s happening and what time it is.”
Anti-trans activist and Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh, meanwhile, fumed that the “woke Left” believes the performance “was a form of racial retribution” and that there’s no doubt that this is part of the reason why the Library of Congress facilitated this spectacle.”
The casually bigoted podcaster further grumbled that Lizzo is a “morbidly obese weirdo in a thong” and he doesn’t “give a flying shit if it’s an honor for HER,” telling another Twitter user it’s “not the point at all” that she is an “extremely gifted musician” who took an appropriate “level of care” while handling the instrument.
Walsh’s boss, conservative media boy king Ben Shapiro, also chimed in with a pseudo-philosophical take on the so-called scandal.
“This Lizzo-flute controversy is a perfect example of what I have termed Face Tattoo Phenomenon™: the phenomenon whereby someone does something deliberately controversial in an attempt to draw attention, and then acts offended when you notice,” he tweeted.
Shapiro, who seems to be perpetually and cringe-inducingly offended by Black pop musicians and rappers, then added: “If all we had seen was the clip of Lizzo playing the flute in the halls of the Library of Congress while wearing a semi-modest outfit, everyone would have shrugged. But that's not the clip everyone championed as groundbreaking: it was the clip where she bragged about twerking.”
Shapiro kept the outrage flowing for his podcast listeners on Thursday, whining that Lizzo was taking an instrument "that speaks to the, sort of, gentility of America's founders" and placing it into a "context that is vulgar." Driving home that point, he added: "It's the vulgarization of American history."
Somewhat surprisingly, Fox News has so far stayed away from this right-wing outrage cycle. of The conservative cable giant’s wannabe TV competitors, however, have jumped on it.
Over on One America News, the struggling pro-Trump conspiratorial channel that recently lost almost all of its cable and satellite providers, host Kara McKinney insisted that Lizzo twerking was a harbinger of the death of democracy.
“Remember last night when we talked about soft totalitarianism, which is what so-called liberal democracy actually is,” McKinney asserted on Wednesday night. “Well, keep that in mind as you watch Lizzo twerk in mockery of the Founding Fathers and their ideals.”
Newsmax host Jenn Pellegrino, a former OAN host herself, demanded to know when there would be a “separation between entertainment and wokeness” while an on-air graphic blared: “SORRY, JAMES MADISON.”
Claiming that “a lot of people are outraged,” Pellegrino also argued that “if you’re complicit in the liberal agenda” then you will be “rewarded” with an honor like playing Madison’s crystal flute. The Newsmax star then turned to her guest, Turning Point USA contributor Jon Root, who snarked that it was “stunning and brave” for an “obese celebrity who thinks she oppressed twerking.”
