I don't understand but I have crossed the line where I'm even supposed to understand new pop things.

She needs to cancel this tour before it cancels her career I’m so serious pic.twitter.com/BhIOF0sOte

— Mo (@rwylmo) April 24, 2025

I will continue to follow the waning high jinks of the pop culture figures that emerged in the 1960s. For example, The Who fired their drummer, then rehired him. If Bob Dylan says anything, I care. Meanwhile, that Katy Perry video, put up less than a day ago, has 9 million views.

"Oh, the women got back already."

I say, scanning the headlines for a report on Katy Perry, et al., and seeing "Blue Origin flight lands safely after taking Katy Perry, historic all-female crew into space" (Fox News).

I hate space tourism, and I hate just about every use I see of the word "historic," but, of course, you don't want anything bad to happen to the humans hurled upward in a tin can and falling back down to where they started.

Here's Katy Perry's delightfully inane pre-flight commentary:

Space tourism is idiotic... as is the use of the word "historic" to describe non-achievements by women.

But The Daily Mail tells us: "Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King have left fans shocked after it was announced they are heading to space. It was revealed on Thursday that the Jeff Bezos's partner, 55, the pop star, 40, and the news anchor, 70, are part of the Blue Origin's historic all-women crew, which will blast off in the spring."

The fan "shock" is only over the sheer randomness. Katy Perry in space! I wasn't thinking about that.

As for "historic"... I'm reminded of the old Samuel Johnson quote: "Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." That is, calling this non-achievement "historic" is actually a sexist putdown.

To wallow in the idiocy, watch Lauren Sanchez do TikTok:

"Don't blame men. It's not our fault that men make better women than women do."

Quips Instapundit, linking to "Women's opportunities are being taken away by 'womxn'/Biological men that identify as women are invading the area created specifically for women and are not only doing a disservice to the women but themselves as well" (Campus Reform). 

I'm not blogging this to engage on the issue whether transwomen belong in women's sports. But I will say, as I've said before, that I think women's sports has to do with the physical body, and not with the mind. Transgenderism radically prioritizes the mind over the body. Each of us holds dominion over our own mind, and that includes power to think of yourself in gendered terms and to give any meaning you want to the idea of what it means to be a woman. In your mind, you can believe it refers only to the body or only to the mind or to something in between or to nothing at all.

The reason I'm blogging this is to extract an unexamined question from "men make better women than women do." And that is: What makes a woman?

If you Google that question, the first thing you'll see is probably the Katy Perry song with that title:

 

Katy says you "could spend your whole life, but you couldn't describe what makes a woman/She’s always been a perfect mystery... and that's what makes a woman to me." That is: It's a mystery! There's no answer — even if you spend your whole life looking for the answer. There's a problem with the question! There is nothing that "makes a woman." 

I wouldn't have cared in the slightest about watching the new Taylor Swift video...

... but The Federalist was going on about it incomprehensibly to the point where it was easier to watch the video:



The piece at The Federalist, by Emily Jashinsky, is "Taylor Swift’s ‘You Need To Calm Down’ Is Breathtakingly Elitist." I will now try to read it:

While tech billionaires mine our divisions for profit, Taylor Swift is playing house in a trailer park. That’s the irony of “You Need To Calm Down,” which belongs to the dark era of shrieking keyboard warfare it rebukes, despite a blindingly bright aesthetic.

Yes, it's very candy colored. Taylor Swift makes herself a cotton candy smoothie for breakfast. We're in a special fantasy world.

To illustrate her LGBT pride anthem, Swift assembled the glitterati, casting them as the heroes of a utopian trailer park where her feud with Katy Perry ends, and ugly gay marriage protesters meet their match in a fabulous show of celebrity force.

This badly needs a copy editor. What are "ugly gay marriage protesters" supposed to be protesting? At least give me a hyphen between "gay" and "marriage" so I can see that we're not talking about ugly gay people protesting marriage.

The feud with Katy Perry (news to me) ends with Swift dressed up as a packet of French fries and Perry dressed up as a cheeseburger... and they hug. Because they go together.

[T]he protesters... look like they should be playing banjos in “Deliverance”: toothless, badly dressed, holding misspelled signs.

Who should identify with these people? They're such a cartoony exaggeration, they don't look like anyone who really exists. So everyone's safe.

"Look, I love being on 'American Idol,' but of course, some would say in the past, 'American Idol' — you know, it’s been a bit of a karaoke show."

"Not anymore. When people like you come on, you bring original music. You bring artistry, and you make the stakes even higher," said Katy Perry to Alejandro Aranda on last night's "American Idol" finale, quoted in "The ‘American Idol’ finale ended in an upset. Katy Perry may have accidentally hinted at why" by Emily Yahr in WaPo.

I didn't think it was an upset. I'd predicted Laine would win. His winning fits the show. Alejandro went a long way with his whispery, musical voice. I appreciated the quiet, when so much else is noisy, but no reason to festoon modest musicality with a glitzy prize.

And Katy Perry is all about big, loud, ludicrous noise, so she can't really talk. Here's how she presented herself on last night's show:



That's the concept of entertainment the show forefronts, and people who enjoy that are taking the trouble to vote about a prize. So it's impressive that Alejandro made it to the final.

The things that went wrong on TV last night were better than anything that went right.

There was a Starbucks cup of coffee on "Game of Thrones":



I don't give a damn about "Game of Thrones," and I don't even want to hear about why I should. But I do like the screwup of including a Starbucks cup.

Meanwhile, over on "American Idol" — which I do watch, and I don't need to hear about why I shouldn't — Katy Perry picked her butt:

When you forget your on live TV! 😂

You get that wedgie girl 😂💖 @katyperry @AmericanIdol
pic.twitter.com/Do3YaeACjt

— CAITLIN (@KCCAITLIN_) May 6, 2019

They eliminated my favorite contestant, Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon. The voters didn't want him, and the judges — faced with two losers and with only one "save" to give — chose the other loser. It was obvious her performances were worse, but to save the boy and send home the girl and leave a final 5 with 4 males and only one female was apparently intolerable. And I think the show's effort to portray Jeremiah as rejected by his conservative parents because he's gay kind of backfired. His parents weren't public figures who deserved public scorn even if they were awful, but they were a lot nicer to him than the show wanted to make it look, as Jeremiah himself pointed out back when he was soaring in the competition (in early April):

The Great Blackface Scare of 2019 reaches Katy Perry.

Do you see the (non)problem?



"In order to be respectful and sensitive the team is in the process of pulling the shoes," a spokesperson said, quoted in The Guardian.

Now, both shoes have blue eyes, and the lips are identical. The facial features are the same, and they're put on 2 different colors of shoes. Would it have been better to only have the light-colored shoes? Is every black face blackface? Is the light one also blackface? Are full red lips to become impermissible?

No one needs shoes with a face on them. They're obviously intended to be light-hearted and fun. Once you decide you want faces on shoes, do you think about racial inclusivity? If you have the beige ones, shouldn't you want black ones too? I'd have suggested non-skin-tone-related colors — like purple and green — but the 2 colors you see there are very common colors for shoes.

But it's interesting how what might have been an effort at inclusivity backfired. Was there also criticism of the blue eyes on the black face? And what about the sexual harassment problem? The shoes are able to look up your skirt.

"There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor."

"Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!"

Tweeted Trump, as the big fires burned. Insensitive? Why did he choose to provoke during the fire?

Of course, the criticism was entirely predictable and harsh. Here's "President Trump's tweet on California wildfires angers firefighters, celebrities" (CNN). Excerpt:

The president of the California Professional Firefighters said the message is an attack on some of the people fighting the devastating fires. "The President's message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines," Brian K. Rice said....

"This is an absolutely heartless response," singer Katy Perry tweeted. "There aren't even politics involved. Just good American families losing their homes as you tweet, evacuating into shelters."

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio also weighed in, blaming the fires on climate change. "The reason these wildfires have worsened is because of climate change and a historic drought," he tweeted. "Helping victims and fire relief efforts in our state should not be a partisan issue."

Trump came back some hours later with 3 tweets. The first 2 take a more compassionate tone, and the third one gets back to his original point:

1. "More than 4,000 are fighting the Camp and Woolsey Fires in California that have burned over 170,000 acres. Our hearts are with those fighting the fires, the 52,000 who have evacuated, and the families of the 11 who have died. The destruction is catastrophic. God Bless them all."

2. "These California fires are expanding very, very quickly (in some cases 80-100 acres a minute). If people don’t evacuate quickly, they risk being overtaken by the fire. Please listen to evacuation orders from State and local officials!"

3. "With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!"

"I could have stood and studied one of those chasubles forever. The passion of our Lord — magnificent!” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan at the Met Gala...

... where the theme was "fashion and the Catholic imagination" and the setting was the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with its new exhibit of Vatican treasures. I'm reading the report in the NYT. So this year, the big gala had mixed celibates 'n' celebrities. The usual fashion-oriented celebrities were on hand — George and Amal Clooney, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, Madonna, Rihanna, etc. etc. — and they were tasked to dress up according to the theme "the Catholic imagination." A "chasuable" is the fanciest layer of the classic priestly get-up, and you can just imagine what counts as Metropolitan-Museum-worthy from the Vatican collection.

The Times got the Cardinal to comment on the Catholic-imagination clothing on the celebrities. He happened to say, "That I want to look at more closely," which I think he probably meant as I have been concentrating on the museum treasures and don't have anything to say yet about what these live people have on, but it came out — at least in this article — sounding like he was planning to gape at the live fleshly bodies on display. As if what's really going on in his Catholic imagination is that other passion — sexual passion. Magnificent!

Here's a series of 61 photos of the celebrities at the gala, in case you want to see how they interpreted "the Catholic imagination." Rihanna has a bejeweled bishop's mitre on her head. Lots of the ladies had headpieces that look like the stylized halo in a medieval icon. Katy Perry wore huge angel wings that insured that no one could stand next to her. Kim Kardashian had crosses on her body-as-a-chalice dress. Kanye approved of his wife:

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/yEYJP7qrvf

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 8, 2018

What's more Catholic-imagination than 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥?

When I saw this Katy Perry kiss on "American Idol," I said, "He should sue her."

I assume the contestants sign away their right to sue for various intrusions on their dignity, including sexual harassment, but I'd like to see them struggle to defend themselves. In a #MeToo world, this must be called sexual assault:



I'm glad to see the NYT covering this story and making it clear that the contestant Benjamin Glaze did not somehow, behind the scenes, agree in advance to be subjected to a scripted, faux-unwanted kiss. Glaze had never been kissed, but Perry invited him to give her a kiss on the cheek, and as he meekly complied, she rotated her head and gave him a smacking kiss on the lips:

”I was a tad bit uncomfortable,” Mr. Glaze said by phone this week, after the incident aired on the season premiere. His first kiss was a rite of passage he had been putting off with consideration. “I wanted to save it for my first relationship,” he said. “I wanted it to be special.”

“Would I have done it if she said, ‘Would you kiss me?’ No, I would have said no,” he said.

Well, she did ask him, but only, apparently, for a cheek kiss, which he, pressured, offered. He's using "kiss" there to mean a kiss on the lips — a sexy and not merely social kiss.

Female privilege.

Happy birthday, @KatyPerry! It’s time to bring out the big balloons! pic.twitter.com/w84DMphK3V

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) October 25, 2017

ADDED: You might think: Katy Perry is not objecting, but what can she do but keep smiling and show herself to be a good sport? She can't improvise, and she can't step on Ellen's effort at comic performance. Ellen is the comedian. She's the comedian with a show, a media outlet to the fans. You can shut that door if you choose, but what's the motivation?

Katy Perry clearly wants her breasts to be noticed and admired — or at least she's decided to use them as devices to further her career. So why would she complain (as long as Ellen doesn't become a target of #MeTooism)?

Ellen is clowning in a style that reminds me of Jerry Lewis, so I went looking for a photo of Jerry Lewis staring at a woman's breasts. I couldn't find one, but I did find this example of Jerry doing the complete opposite of staring at a woman's breasts:

"It was a revelation, it was a reckoning... Gaga and I just looking at each other, and being like, fuck it, we need to touch each other."

Said Katy Perry — describing the scene at the Hillary Clinton election night party — quoted in a long NYT article titled "Katy Perry Woke Up. She Wants to Tell You All About It." The NYT — which does an "expletive deleted" where I've helpfully supplied the "fuck" — informs us that Ms. Perry was "downing drinks" and she "reached out to the nearest person for physical support."

Don't you love it when you're reaching out to the nearest person for physical support and it's Lady Gaga?

Anyway, there's a new Katy Perry. She's rising about fakery:

“All the awards shows are fake,” she said, “and all the awards that I’ve won are fake,” she added, explaining that they don’t represent the audience. “They’re constructs.”

The old Katy Perry wasn’t a construct, she explained, and she isn’t dead. “I didn’t kill her, because I love her, and she is exactly what I had to do then,” she said. “And I’m not a con artist, I didn’t con people, like, that was just me. And this is me now.”

Remember when Nixon said "I am not a con artist"?

"The pop star wore a white outfit adorned with colorful photos of the Manchester victims who died in the May 22 attack..."

"... they could be seen around her collar, wrist and draped across her back in the shape of a heart."

It's a hard task, dancing and entertaining to the theme of death by terrorism. What can you do? Make it about the victims. How? Put a photograph of each one. Wear an outfit made of photographs. What else can you do?

I thought of the ice dancers Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh skating about September 11th, at the 2002 Winter Olympics (only 4 months after 9/11), in costumes representing destruction:



It's not easy. You're called upon to entertain the crowd and to embody something that must be represented as the polar opposite of entertaining, and yet you must, at some level, realize that there is a horrible, sick entertainment value to the terrorism — titillation stirring up the next attack and ratings for the news media that will stream coverage of the next event you'll be asked to commemorate in a costume.

Katy Perry "looks like she’s modeling the Little Edie Beale Haute Couture line."

Say Tom and Lorenzo, and the top-rated comment says: "This is what I want to wear when I scatter cat food out for the raccoons in the attic of my dilapidated Hamptons estate."

Whether you get the "Grey Gardens" references or not, you've got to click through to see one of the craziest outfits ever.

MEANWHILE: "Shaming all the normcores."

"Now [Hillary Clinton] can add 'fashion muse' and 'footwear model' to the list [of important titles], thanks to Katy Perry, who designed a pair of pumps in her honor, dubbing them The Hillary."

"And when Clinton got her hands on a pair of the baby pink pumps, she was more than happy to show them off to their best effect for Perry’s Instagram."

Effuses People Magazine's "Style" section.

Speaking of style, what atrocious writing style! When I hear "got her hands on a pair of baby pink pumps," I'm the kind of person who immediately wants to say: and got her feet on a pair of adult blue gloves. And when I hear "more than happy," I go looking for the George Carlin clip:



ADDED: I got to that link via Drudge, who follows it with what I think is a non-accidental line-up of links:



Thanks to Fernandinande (commenting in the café post below) for prompting me to acknowledge Drudge and to perceive intentional drudgtaposition. Notice how the word "pump" appears twice. Well, what do you think? Intentional comic juxtaposition? Here's another way to frame the screenshot. What do you think of this?



You've got the 2 images of something normally unseen. We peer in utero at unborn babies. (What are they doing?) And we gawk endlessly at a belly a man had dressed to cover. Bracketing these 2 images of human beings who did not choose self-exposure are 2 women who dearly want and demand our attention, who pose with forthright willingness for the camera: 1. Hillary Clinton, positioning herself like a cute-girl marionette, displays pop-star-branded candy-colored shoes, and 2. Ayn Rand stares at us in utterly serious black and white, imposing her imperious will that says we must see her as both distinctly beautiful and absolutely devoid of girlishness.

Can Bernie help Hillary?

Look at the body language in this photograph (at the NYT). The chairs are set on the stage with room between them, so that the candidates could sit squarely on the seats and be close enough without touching, but both candidates sit off center. Bernie is quite far over to the side, and he's also crossing his leg away from her and high up on the knee to create a barrier which is fortified by his arm stretched all the way out across the leg. His other hand is in his pocket. Hillary, for her part, is turned away from Bernie, and she has her ankles crossed and her hands clasped in her lap.

The accompanying article, published today, is titled "Presidential Election: Any Surprises Left?" The political preference of the NYT is hilariously highlighted by the 2 headings: "Will the stars align for Mrs. Clinton?" and "Will the K.K.K. return to front and center?" As to the "stars"* aligning, the "surprise" for Hillary is that Pharrell Williams, Jay Z, and Katy Perry are performing at rallies, "working hard to drum up interest among millennial voters." And the political stars, Obama, Biden, and Bernie are doing events.

Judging from the photograph, Bernie is withholding his full and open support. Perhaps he knows that the passion and heightened consciousness that he inspired cannot simply be handed to Hillary Clinton. Or perhaps Bernie had recently read that newly leaked email:

In February, longtime Clinton adviser and Democratic insider Joel Johnson had sent an email to Clinton campaign head John Podesta, emphasizing, “Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp. We can’t start believing our own primary bullshit. This is no time to run the general. Crush him as hard as you can.”

Just after Salon reported Johnson’s message on Thursday morning, however, the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks released another trove of emails to and from Podesta. In this new batch of messages appeared Podesta’s response to Johnson’s advice.

“I agree with that in principle,” Podesta wrote in reply to Johnson’s “no mercy” email.

“Where would you stick the knife in?” Podesta asked....

Johnson proposed portraying Sanders as an “Obama betrayer,” noting that the White House would help affirm the talking point. He also said Sanders should be depicted as a “hapless legislator,” which other members of Congress would help affirm; a “false promiser,” which “policy elites” would affirm; and as someone who is unable to win, which “black people will affirm.”

_______________________

* Did you know that when you're a star, they let you do anything?

"Althouse can analyze anything, anything, for untested assumptions and bullshit."

Said commenter John Lynch, after reading my analysis of the Katy Perry video "Roar."

"Everyone agrees: Katy Perry’s dancing sharks were definitely the best part of the Super Bowl halftime show..."

"No matter who you are, Katy Perry’s sharks just get you."

I'm really afraid of the effect pop music is having on our young people.

Have we lost our minds? Is it satanic?