Captain Ed is a hoot this morning:
Can this inauguration get any more embarrassing? First, our Chief Justice flubs the oath of office — the entire reason for the event — and then the President delivers a downer speech that even his adoring throngs can’t cheer. Now it turns out that the musicians pulled a Milli Vanilli and synchronized themselves to recorded music…
From the article he links:
“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.
Undeterred, our brave skipper sails on with some updates:
Update III: Just to clarify, there are good reasons not to play stringed instruments in 30-degree weather. Having a recording as a contingency makes some sense, if one insists on scheduling a string ensemble for an outdoor performance in January in DC, when that kind of weather is the norm rather than the exception. If you play the recording instead of performing live, though, be honest about it.
From the article he links:
Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.
The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the use of recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural musical performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just such an eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and choruses, which performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a recording, she said.
In other words, it is embarrassing because it is just like Milli Vanilli except it isn’t at all like Malli Vanilli if you rely on Ed’s source, and it is embarrassing because they weren’t open and honest about it except for the fact that Ed’s source says they were open and honest about it.
You know, how much of the problem with the wingnuttosphere’s stupidity is THAT THEY SIMPLY CAN NOT READ?
Peter J
Fixed.
TheFountainHead
If I were M&V, I’d be collecting royalties from every one of the mentally slow persons on the right who refers to it as such. Might be enough to re-start their careers.
Joshua Norton
I guess they haven’t figured out that all the rock stars who walk around with those Battlestar Galactica microphones hanging off the side of their heads are just lip synching, too. They get paid big bucks to jump around stage while their latest CD is playing. Broadway now does the same thing.
Oh! The humanity.
JL
Shorter Captain Ed, "so sorry to be a sore loser, but…"
K. Grant
They are simply following in the footsteps of their newly anointed savior, St. Sarah of Alaska, whose level of ignorance and illiteracy is the mark by which they all measure themselves. The good Captain is showing that he has far to go, as he actually referenced a newspaper. Alas, it is the mistake of youth. Someday he will get it, and eschew all unnecessary outside entanglements.
Gwendy
It’s so embarrassing to have the most well-attended, most viewed, internationally heralded feel-good inauguration of the last 30 years.
Also, Yo-Yo Ma is awesome – live and in Memorex.
The Moar You Know
This is not a reading comprehension issue. This is a sore-loser crybaby latching on to the most trivial bullshit arguments that he can, because that’s all he has left.
Enjoy your eight or more years in the wilderness, Captain Ed Dumbfuck.
Joshua Norton
I guess that Yo-Yo Ma playing along to his OWN music is a much bigger embarrassment than, say, the Chimpmeister getting pelted with eggs during his coronation.
It’s pretty pathetic when they try to turn everything into some sort of an AHA! moment.
lutton
>>Might be enough to re-start their careers
Well, except for the dead one…
jrg
Special Ed missed the real story – If it was too cold to play stringed instruments in DC on Jan 20th, doesn’t that prove that global warming "theories" are a liberal conspiracy to destroy capitalism?
Seriously, though… I play guitar from time to time and I cannot imagine playing outside in Tuesday’s weather. I guess they could have used patio heaters, but those throw strings out of tune pretty quickly. It stinks they had to use a back track, but many of the live solo performers I see do that anyway.
John Moltz
Wasn’t the real embarrassment of Milli Vanilli that they didn’t actual do any of their recordings? That, not only were they lip syncing, they were lip syncing to *someone else’s* performance? Is Ed saying YoYo Ma can’t play the cello?
MikeJ
I’m still not sure I understand how Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma giving a professional performance is supposed to reflect poorly on President Obama. Did he tell them to do it? I didn’t know he was so knowledgeable about the effects of weather on antique instruments.
I’m really hoping Obama will invite these performers to the White House, and maybe bring an indie rock band with ’em. Yo-Yo Ma La Tengo.
Tom
Also, I find it interesting that NBC knew about the synching and didn’t bother to report it to their viewers. What other fakery from this administration will NBC knowingly omit from their coverage?
This is my favorite part. No matter the issue, you can’t count on Ed to work some media bias angle into a story.
p.a.
They can read. They can’t process the information. There is a condition called conservataisis blogulosii which destroys the corpus callosum, leading to the unfortunate results of the last 16 years.
(emphasis mine)
It is, of course, a prime example of liberal prejudice that the disease is not widely known. No Hollywood publicity, no theater productions, no ribbons. Possibly because it was once thought to be debilitating but not life-threatening. This belief began to change in 2006.
Lihtox
Clarinets don’t do so well in cold weather either (speaking as a former marching band clarinetist), particularly if the clarinet was wooden (as good ones are, or at least used to be).
It must be terribly unsatisfying for a musician to have to play-sync like that. Maybe they should have built a little greenhouse for them to play in instead? :) I wonder which would seem more "real": instrumentalists on stage in front of you, syncing their motions to pre-recorded music, OR instrumentalists inside some building, playing the music live, and broadcast to the crowds via a Jumbotron?
Rick Taylor
On the bright side, at least he blamed Roberts than Obama for flubbing the oath.
Tom
This also reminds me of the local TV station that had a story — months old — that Obama and Blagojevich met about the open Illinois senate seat. And I don’t even think it was a story about that, but kind of a throw-away sentence within the story that someone wingnut found, and the right-wing blogs started incessantly linking to as proof that Obama "lied".
Well, turns out that detail of the story was wrong, and the station pulled the story.
Now, left with their dicks in their hands, the wingunts turn their ire to the station, attacking them for shoddy and dishonest reporting, etc…
So, now with this "milli vanilli" story, they attack the "administration" — even though it’s unclear if Team Obama made the call — for not being forthright about it. When it was shown they WERE forthright about it, Ed attacks NBC for not reporting this earth-shattering news that would have prevented him from looking like a fool.
It’s so much fun to watch the right-wing nuts rely on the "liberal" media for all their information, then attack them like petulant tweens when they either A) don’t get that information or B) get the wrong information.
Cris
Precisely. If you want to be critical of the Williams quartet’s decision to mime to a recording of themselves, you can compare them to Ashlee Simpson. But even that doesn’t fit because they at least queued up the correct track.
Persia
Lithox, NPR said this morning that they did play, but the recording was what went through the speakers. So if you were standing up close presumably you heard they crappy live sound. (Of course NPR is also a hotbed of liberal bias, or so I’m told, so maybe they lied as part of a greater cover-up.)
Tsulagi
That’s what he is.
I’m going to miss Boston Legal. Denny Crane was my favorite wingnut.
The majority of sane adults could.
Given Obama’s inclination and strong ability to go transcendy, while it wasn’t the type of speech I was expecting, I liked it. Basically it was a speech that he intends to get to work, that major shit has happened, and that we all need to work together to fix it. I was expecting that kind of speech at his first SOTU address.
By far the best line of his inauguration speech was about the false choice between our safety and our ideals. Only weak incompetents would see that as a either/or, black/white choice. Then he continued that America would be back championing those ideals. Good stuff. Made better by the Commander Guy of weak incompetents having to sit there and listen to it.
Incertus
@Rick Taylor: He did that so he could prove his "intellectual honesty." That means that we have to automatically believe everything else he writes.
demimondian
@jrg: I have three kids who play stringed instruments — viola, cello and bass — and I would not let any of them move their "real" instruments from one environment to another on Tuesday. The risk that the instrument would crack is too great.
I’ve sung in that kind of weather, but, even then, if we were performing iwth orchestra, we would expect to be accompanied by a tape under the circumstances unless the orchestra had a heated pit from which to perform. (In which case we would be very jealous of them. Performing in that kind of cold is agonizing.)
Quaker in a Basement
You know, how much of the problem with the wingnuttosphere’s stupidity is THAT THEY SIMPLY
CANWILL NOT READ?Yr wlcm.
Mnemosyne
Funny, I heard a lot of applause during Obama’s speech. Maybe it’s been so long since Special Ed heard a president applauded that he didn’t recognize the sound?
joe from Lowell
and then the President delivers a downer speech that even his adoring throngs can’t cheer.
Um…what?
jenniebee
Did he seriously just suggest that Yo Yo Ma and Itzahk Perlman are the classical equivalents of the Monkees?
I thought nutzos only blew in fairy tales…
brendancalling
if Special Ed wasn’t so busy pretending to be a pirate or whatever he thinks he is, maybe he’d be a better reader.
But as long as he’s playing with his plastic sword (or more likely his pork sword while he watches Red Dawn for the 75th time and sighs wistfully over Pat Swayze’s pecs), we’re doomed to his doofustry.
Litlebritdifrnt
Ditto on the dittos about the instruments, (DH dontchaknow) woodwinds do not perform well in the cold, or the rain (in which case they can actually be ruined to the extent that they need hundreds of dollars worth of repairs.) I also think the Milli Vanilli comparison is utterly absurd. "is he trying to suggest that Yo Yo Ma can’t play the cello?" prexactly.
PS) anyone know if he has done Variations? I love that piece by wots his face Lloyd Webber, wondering if Yo Yo Ma has done it. I know I know go google it.
Comrade grumpy realist
Um, considering that we have been analyzing Obama’s speech in our Legal Writing class as an excellent example of persuasive writing, I think the "downer of a speech" tag also is not very well connected with reality.
Oh, but I forgot–laws and reality are something that have a "liberal" bias….
mrmobi
I thought the chamber music interlude a lovely idea, and was actually surprised that Perlman and Yo Yo Ma would perform on instruments so valuable in such cold weather. I was amazed they were so in tune. Seems like a smart move to pre-record given what weather can be like in Foggy Bottom. Perlman’s violin is a 1714 Stradivarius from the "golden period," and is worth millions. Oh, and Captain Ed is seriously running out of issues, don’t ya think?
Lihtox
@Persia: Thanks for the info. That seems the best possible solution.