September 11, 2011

Katy Perry

Katy Perry

What were those parents thinking the other night when Ke$ha brought a goofy guy out of the audience, wrapped him up in cellophane, and sat on his lap during “Grow a Pair”? How did they explain the dude who moments later came out dressed in a wobbly penis costume and bounced his fleshy balls on the hapless fan’s face? Would the children in the audience impress their classmates the next morning with stories about last night’s show? Certainly, the lucky little kids who danced next to Mr. Cock-and-Balls during the grand finale are now the envy of their peers. I guess giant dildos are the new teddy bear.

Then there’s Lady Gaga. This androgynous android used Oprah’s ovaries as speed bags this year when she rocketed to #1 on Forbes’s Celebrity 100 and #11 Most Powerful Woman with $110 million in earnings, 43 million Facebook fans, and 13 million Twitter followers. She is a fame monster.

Despite her voracious hetero propensities, Gaga’s live performance is gayer than an Athenian bath house. She may look like a tranny with a very convincing ass, but she’s an opportunistic LGBT wannabe—a “wezbo,” if you will—crusading to make the world safe for gayness: condemning hate crimes, supporting gays in the military, and laying down catchy dance tunes so queer, they would have turned Freddie Mercury straight. Gaga’s synthpop is as infectious as her vagina must surely be. As I type this, her voice continues to loop somewhere in my hippocampus: “Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face….” I’m willing to try trepanation to make it stop!

Like any good harem, these ladies all have one man in common: Jesus Christ. But the Risen Lord is like the ultimate hard-to-get alpha who overplays his hand. Katy Perry left Christ to marry at a Hindu altar. Ke$ha just keeps him around her neck for good luck, along with a piece of her mother’s placenta for psychic powers.

Lady Gaga remains obsessed with Jesus. In her video for “Alejandro,” Gaga wears a rubber nun’s habit and swallows a rosary, then simulates a gangbang with an upside-down cross emblazoned on her crotch. In “Judas,” she plays Mary Magdalene, who pleasures her Latino biker Jesus before his glorification. “I feel like honestly that God sent me those lyrics and that melody…there’s no way for something that pure to be wrong,” she told NME.

During her show, Lady Gaga writhed on the ego ramp, shrieking up at Jesus, asking him if he would forgive everything. Then she moaned something that really struck me: “Tonight, my religion is you [the audience]!” It seemed like the feeling was mutual.

This shtick doesn’t shock me. I did everything in my power to burn through my innocence as a youngster. What surprises me today is how deviance has become so mainstream. Drunk sluts and fag hags were once the mysterious denizens of society’s underbelly. Since the 60s’ sexual revolution, they have become the canonized heroines of the modern world, from Janis Joplin to Madonna. Hedonistic art is a barometer of underlying social decay.

It is impossible to say how deep an international celebrity’s influence goes. The kids obviously try to dress like their superstars, they try to sing and dance like them, and despite national statistics that show teen promiscuity diminishing slightly since the early 90s, plenty of them try to get freaky like they think their idols do. Jesus may forgive them, but Facebook never forgets.

I get paid whether the show is an evangelical revival or a live sex act, so I shouldn’t care either way. Millions of imprudent parents allow their daughters to flirt with whoredom—let them. “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”

Innocence is precious. That’s why marketing agencies sell it to concert promoters at such a phenomenal price. Knowing that most potential life mates gauge a woman’s long-term value by her relative chastity, I’ll do my best to make sure that my nieces—or perhaps one day, my daughters—remain outsiders to fads that glamorize becoming a dartboard for sperm. What more can I do? Organize a moral boycott against jerking off to Katy Perry?

 

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