Thursday, February 23, 2017

Too Late, Jackie Evancho

Jackie Evancho, who sang the United States national anthem at Donald Trump’s inauguration, is now suddenly upset with him over his removing certain protections for transgender students, as she has a transgender sibling.

Yesterday, she posted this on Twitter: “I am obviously disappointed in the @POTUS decision to send the #transgender bathroom issue to the states to decide.”

She then followed it up with this, also on Twitter: “@realDonaldTrump u gave me the honor 2 sing at your inauguration. Pls give me & my sis the honor 2 meet with u 2 talk #transgender rghts”

On the one hand, I think it’s great when anyone turns against Trump, even in the slightest way. I’m surprised that he hasn’t lost more of his supporters. However, on the other hand, it seems more than a bit disingenuous on Jackie’s part. After all, she can’t pretend she didn’t know about this issue months ago. Many people sent her messages, asking her to reconsider performing at Trump’s inauguration, myself included. And many specifically mentioned her transgender sister in their messages, and what Donald would likely do regarding that segment of our population. Jackie knew, but she went ahead and sang for him anyway. And now Donald is doing precisely what many warned her he would do, and she’s upset. Well, it’s too late. The time to take her stand was in January, by not performing and by publicly stating her reason for backing out of the performance. But now, it’s like she’s trying to play for both sides, and that just doesn’t work. 

Again, I think it’s good that she’s raising her voice in opposition to Trump (or at least one of his policies), even though it seems somewhat hypocritical. It is, of course, at the risk of alienating her new right wing fan base that fell in love with her specifically because she chose to lend her voice to the celebration of that racist prick. But she lost many people when she sang for him. I, for one, sent her a message in December stating explicitly that if she went through with her inauguration performance I would never purchase any of her CDs or concert tickets. And I never will, regardless of her current and future actions.

Too late, Jackie Evancho.

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