Are we really going to do this over America’s 250th birthday party?
This year is the 250th birthday for our great nation, and there are massive celebrations being planned for all around the country.
The celebrations are being planned by Freedom 250, a non-partisan organization responsible for putting together all the festivities. And one of those events is the Great American State Fair, a national exposition bringing together all 50 states for a World’s Fair-style celebration featuring live entertainment, exhibits, patriotic tributes, innovation showcases, cultural programming, and other attractions from around the country.
The event will be hosted in Washington, D.C. from June 25 through July 10 on the National Mall, and earlier this week Freedom 250 announced the first round of headliners who will be performing at the celebration – but of course there’s already controversy.
The originally announced headliners included Martina McBride, C+C Music Factory, The Commodores, Vanilla Ice, Young MC, Morris Day and The Time, Flo Rida, Bret Michaels, and Milli Vanilli.
Now, first of all, not the strongest lineup for America’s 250th birthday… I mean, Milli Vanilli is best known for their lip-syncing scandal, and they’re from Germany, not the United States. Oh, and one of them is dead.
And immediately after the lineup was announced, Morris Day and The Time and Young MC both announced that they were backing out of the event, with Young MC claiming that the artists “were never told about any political involvement” in the fair:
“Despite the claims by the organizers that the event is non-partisan, SPIN magazine describes it as ‘Trump-backed.’ I hope to perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”
I mean, sure it’s Trump-backed, because he’s the president? Did they think that the president wasn’t backing the country’s birthday celebration?
In addition to those two, C+C Music Factory frontman Freedom Williams also posted a profanity-laced tirade saying that while he doesn’t “f–k with Trump,” he refuses to give in to the online trolls trying to cancel him or tell him where he can and cannot play.
So yeah, it’s been kind of a mess so far.
Well another artist has found herself under fire for her involvement in the Great American State Fair, despite the fact that it’s a nonpartisan event meant to celebrate our great nation.
After the lineup was announced, fans took to social media to criticize Martina McBride for performing at the event – simply because Donald Trump is the president:
Now, to be clear, this isn’t a partisan event or something that has anything to do with Donald Trump, other than the fact that he’s our president at the time it’s going on. This is a celebration of America’s 250th birthday, planned by a nonpartisan organization, and is meant to showcase all 50 states and the best that our country has to offer.
And Martina McBride, while generally choosing to stay out of politics, has publicly supported left-leaning causes in the past like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ advocacy. (As one of those tweets above pointed out, she’s also liked several posts indicating that she identifies with the left).
The point here, though, is that this is something that shouldn’t have anything to do with politics. It’s not a Republican or Trump event, and the only reason people are upset about the artists being there is because Trump is president and has been promoting the event as any president would do.
It’s exhausting to have to go through this with everything even remotely connected to Trump, but I guess that’s just the hyper-politicized society we live in these days.
