I’m disappointed in Jennifer Holliday.  For those of you who may be out of the loop, Donald Trump is having a devil of a time booking performers for the inauguration.  An inquiry went out to the Dreamgirls star.  While she was considering it, people on the Internet immediately went on the attack.  “They were calling me coon, calling me house nigger, calling me Aunt Jemima, calling me all kinds of names and asking me to kill myself.”  I personally saw dozens of vile posts specifically from members of the LGBT community.  People were saying things like she’ll never work in our community again, that the gays made her career and they will destroy it.  One memorable post said, “Remember what we did to Donna Summer“.  Ominous indeed.

I assume people who would perform at this inauguration fall into two categories: 1) people who support and voted for Trump and b) people who need the money and/or exposure.  Holliday went out of her way to say she did not fall into either category.  She publicly stated that she voted for Hillary.  She said she wanted to sing for America.  She wanted to help heal the divide.  Her fee would be donated to LGBT charities.  Her inspiration was Marian Anderson, the black opera singer who gave a concert in 1939 at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to over 75,000 on the National Mall after being denied the opportunity to sing in an auditorium because of her race.  Anderson didn’t buckle down under hate – she went forward.  But despite Holliday’s best intentions, she was met with vitriolic hate from all sides and was essentially bullied to not perform.  She apologized specifically to the LGBT community for even considering to perform “for America”, and ended her address with this: “Thank you for your posted comments both the good supportive ones as well as the ugly hurtful ones.”  When we went low, she went high.