Katy Perry: Putting the 'part' into 'bipartisan'

You know, the hardest thing for the Obama White House - besides the questions about the way their drones keep raining death down on the heads of people thousands of miles away - is trying to navigate the deep rift between the parties in America.

Still, the inauguration is a good time to try and overcome those divisions, isn't it? To remember that Obama is the nation's president, not just a Democratic president. That's why its a cultural event as much as a political one, and why singers like Katy Perry are invited along. To be inclusive. After all, if Perry's family can straddle a political fault line, why can't America, right?

Hang on, what's that, Perry?

Pop star Katy Perry, who will be featured on the cover of the January 2014 issue of Marie Claire, told the magazine that she refused to allow her parents to watch her sing at President Obama’s inauguration “on principle,” and because they are Republicans.

“My parents are Republicans, and I’m not. They didn’t vote for Obama, but when I was asked to sing at the inauguration, they were like, ‘We can come.’ And I was like, ‘No, you can’t,’” she told the magazine.

Yes. Because the idea of someone who didn't vote for Obama not attending one of his inaugurations is impossible to even conceive, isn't it?

Beyonce open and closed her mouth perfectly

Everyone agreed - and by "everyone" I mean "people I follow on Twitter who expressed an opinion" - that Beyonce nailed it at the Obama inauguration.

Now it turns out she got some help being note-perfect when you've actually already done the song and were just miming.

Does it matter? Not really, in the sense that Obama was only miming the inauguration anyway - the actual swearing had been done the day before, and if Barack was just opening and closing his mouth for a performance he'd done earlier.

On the other hand: what was all that 'pulling the earpiece out' business? If she'd been singing live, that would have been a brilliant moment - "Beyonce doesn't need the monitors".

Instead, it turns out to have been a bit of empty theatre.

So Beyonce didn't nail it. She was just very good at using a shortcut. She No More Nailed it.

The inauguration borrowed a trick from the Beijing Olympics

Ah, what could be better than to gather a million or so people in one place to listen to tapes? Okay, admittedly, the music at the inauguration wasn't the main focus, but it's still a little cheesy that Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriella Montero and Anthony McGill were sort-of miming.

Not quite miming, as they played along with the tape, but their instruments weren't amplified. Which makes the official explanation - fears that the cold weather would damage the instruments - seem a little confusing.

Violinist Itzhak Perlman said "it would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way".

"This occasion's got to be perfect. You can't have any slip-ups," he told the New York Times.

Ah, yes. Perfect. Except in the actually playing sense of the word, then.

As it turns out, they might have been better off letting the musicians play live and pre-recording the words of the oath of office.

Usher, you campaigned with Obama - you must have some crazy tales, right?

Or... perhaps not:

"The first time we met, we actually were in transit in his car... kind of rolling. And, I'm starving, 'cause I hadn't really ate.

"We had been campaigning all day, all over the place, and I kind of look around and I'm like, 'Oooh, let me eat this candy bar or whatever.

"And we both look at it, and I'm like, 'You're not gonna eat that, are you?' and he's like, 'You're not gonna eat it, are you?' I'm like, 'Well, I'm gonna eat it if you don't.'

So I grab and I tear it open - I took the man's meal."

That tapping sound? Oh, that's the hand of history on Usher's shoulder, that is.

Jay Z believes he can fly

While, obviously, it's an exciting and historic day, are MTV really dropping their critical faculties so low when they get excited about Jay-Z's line in Young Jeezy's My President?

he borrowed heartily from a message about Barack Obama that had been circulating on e-mail chains for some time. Jay, of course, managed to make the saying all his own.

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk/ Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run/ Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly," he raps on the track, which he debuted Sunday at Love nightclub in Washington, D.C. "So I'mma spread my wings/ You could meet me in the sky."

Jay Z then "explains" these lyrics to MTV. Now, they do acknowledge that it's just a couple of words tacked on to an email forward, but don't seem to let that stop their fawning over Mr. Z for being ever so clever.

"It's lucky" chuckles Jay-Z, "as the original draft I wrote I'd left in the 'this email is intended for the named recipient only/ if you have received in error please destroy and/ notify the sender' piece, and that just wasn't scanning properly."

Not that Will Smith oversells it, or anything

Of course, you'd be excited to be going to the Obama inauguration. Even if you weren't playing. But Will Smith is attempting to turn 'not being asked to do Boom! Shake The Room' in Washington into a role in its own right:

"You know I thought about that, but I think I'm going to keep it a little more subdued than that. I'm just going to stand there and be an eyewitness to history."

You're going to watch, then, Will. Unless you're being invited in like a superannuated wedding guest to sign a register of some sort, you're watching. Unless there's a chance that after the event is over, and everyone has gone back home, the cops might swing through and say "hey - what happened here? Someone better call Will Smith to see if he saw anything...", you're in the audience.

Etheridge: He can't be anti-gay, he has my records

Fresh from Rufus Wainwright's clumsy attempt to campaign against Proposition 8 by suggesting he didn't really support gay marriage at all comes another example of pop stars who should know better not quite thinking through their stances, as Melissa Etheridge writes to the Huffington Post to try and calm everyone down about Rick Warren taking time off from hating gays to appear at Barack Obama's inauguration:

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher.

So, on the one hand we have a bloke making videos comparing gays to paedophiles, on the other, the same bloke tells Melissa Etheridge that he has some of her records. Well, that would seem to cancel each other out, right? After all, if a man tells you he owns a record by a lesbian, he can't possibly be all bad, right?

He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays.

Aha - so, somehow, he accidentally managed to bracket people who love those of the same sex with people who take sexual advantage of children. Just blurted it out, accidentally, and probably really, really meant to edit it out of the video before distributing it.

Etheridge doesn't mention if the "open hearted" man she went to meet also suggested that he "regretted" calling the Church Of England's position on gay bishops "wrong" when he supported the Church Of Uganda boycott of the Lambeth Conference this year:

Dr Warren said that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. "We shall not tolerate this aspect at all," Dr Warren said.

Etheridge suggests that gays and lesbians should engage with Warren, and rather than march on his church, should help out with his church's work against HIV and AIDS. Really, Mel? Because what he campaigns for is "saving sex for marriage" and "one partner for life". True love waits.

Oh, and he doesn't think condoms will help:

Supply condoms and eventually microbicides for everyone. The correct and consistent use of condoms may prevent HIV infection. But condoms will never stop the pandemic. In many places, getting condoms is nearly impossible. And even when a person has a condom and uses it properly, there still is a chance the condom will fail. Likewise, microbicides – which researchers hope will enable women to protect themselves – will only reduce risk, not eliminate it; the development of effective microbicides is still years away.

His desperation to stamp AIDS is so serious, he's invented a little acrostic - which he has copyrighted and insists can only be used with permission.
Yes, everyone should really get behind his campaign.

Etheridge is not an idiot. And she's probably capable of Googling Rick Warren's name. But, hey, he can't be all bad: he says he's bought her records.