On Friday, President Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to "American icon" Elvis Presley, among others. Given that, and as the 2018 Democrat Party is following Hillary Clinton's intolerant example, I've updated the below 2016 essay.

Hillary vs Elvis 2016
Did Clinton believe Presley to have been a "deplorable?"

Singer Mary J. Blige's musical successes were commercial and era-bound in nature; she neither turned new creative soil nor was particularly interesting in her revisiting of cliches.

She did, though, slur her artistic superior. In 1997, Blige lied bold-facedly about the late Elvis Presley, deriding him without foundation as "racist."

In 2016, the otherwise irrelevant Blige was a minor player in political news. She made quite the loud spectacle of herself on behalf of Hillary Clinton. 

In a simply tilted video interview spot that ran online, Blige sang questions to Clinton. The candidate wore a pained, 'why in the hell did I agree to this?' expression, the same one she sported during her earlier Between Two Ferns appearance. 

My guess: Some millennial vote-hunting campaign functionary was later disciplined roundly.

But Hillary's opportunistic embrace of Elvis-hater Blige neatly illustrated a larger reality about her campaign, as well as of a foul and nonsensical cultural trend. In that addled movement, everything established, successful, reasonable, and traditional was to be reviled and plowed under. 

No distinction was recognized between positives and negatives. By virtue of vintage, all were considered equally opprobrious. 

To have enjoyed previous cultural cache, went the fury-brained half-thinking, was to be (pick one or more) racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. And, hence, the despised enemy to be strangled by the streets-milling, sign-hefting forces of goodness.

In the undisciplined era of anarchic tumult, Hillary Clinton made manifest her sympathy: Out with the old, and in with the new. Elvis was counted as an 'irredeemable deplorable,' by her rancid arithmetic. 

Given her amoral calculating, it was logical -- albeit still thoroughly despicable -- that Clinton cast her lot with rampaging, violent, and destructive street thugs over law officers representing decent and orderly American society. 

At this point, a stipulation cries out to be acknowledged. No candidate can reasonably be assumed to share every belief of their backers. 

A major misjudgment was made by news media commentators challenging Donald Trump to publicly distance himself from stray unsavory supporters. Such outsiders had without invitation sought greater visibility by attaching themselves to his more popular and spotlighted effort.

It was unreasonable to demand that Trump acknowledge them as legitimately worth attention. But as seen in the 2016 election season, reasonableness was most clearly not a mainstream media ambition.

There was a considerable difference between that and the Hillary/Blige case: The Democratic candidate chose her association with the Elvis-smearing singer of long-since-gone renown.

Hillary did not necessarily share Blige's deceitful, noxious prejudice. But by uncritically availing herself of the faded pop luminary's aid and comfort -- and, in a very real larger sense, with the bedraggled, anarchic assassins of all-that-came-before -- she certainly posited this metaphorical choice:

You could stand with either Elvis Presley or Hillary Clinton. Couldn't be both.


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