{"id":91144,"date":"2023-02-12T12:25:21","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T20:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=91144"},"modified":"2023-02-12T12:25:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T20:25:21","slug":"grammys-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2023\/02\/12\/grammys-past-and-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammys Past and Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOnce again I am caught in the glare of ageism and
\nmisogyny that permeates the world we live in. 
\nA world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45.<\/em><\/span>\u201d<\/em><\/span>
\n\u2013 <\/em>Madonna<\/strong>.  I don\u2019t know what 45-year-old woman she\u2019s talking about.  Certainly it\u2019s not an
\nautobiographical statement from the 64-year-old pop star.  If so, boy, has she struggled the past two decades!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Leave it to Madonna <\/strong>to turn her disastrous appearance at the Grammys <\/em><\/strong>into an ageist, misogynistic attack.  I am not going to criticize the Material Girl<\/em>\u2019s looks \u2013 although she\u2019s been known to take potshots about the appearance of other females in the industry.  When you show up looking like a cross between \u201cHeidi: The Golden Years\u201d and Frau Blucher, you should anticipate a few raised eyebrows \u2013 at least from people who still can raise their eyebrows!<\/p>\n

The person I feel bad for is poor Bonnie Raitt<\/strong>, who won Song of the Year <\/em>more than three decades after winning Album of the Year <\/em>for Nick of Time<\/em><\/strong>.  The Daily Mail <\/em>ran the headline, \u201cShock as unknown blues singer beats Beyonc\u00e9<\/strong>, Adele <\/strong>and Taylor Swift <\/strong>to win Song of the Year <\/em>at the Grammys<\/em>\u201d.  Unknown?  Oh, the humanity!<\/p>\n

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When you watch a televised awards show, you often see famous faces sitting alongside complete unknowns.  As it turns out, they are often completely unknown to the people they\u2019re sitting with.  Those people are \u201cseat fillers\u201d.  They\u2019re hired (or, more often than not, unpaid) to fill empty seats during a telecast.  One seat filler called \u201cAlmostAnna<\/strong>\u201d on TikTok <\/em>shared a bit of \u201cinsight\u201d into Ben Affleck <\/strong>and Jennifer Lopez<\/strong>\u2019s behavior during the show.  \u201cJ.Lo <\/em>showed Ben Affleck the phone and was like \u2018Oh my God, honey, look at this meme circulating about you,\u2019 and he was like \u2018Oh God, this again.\u2019\u201d  Isn\u2019t it fascinating that these two people from completely different backgrounds now speak in almost identical cadences?  It\u2019s as if it were coming out of the same person\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n

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This year, the Grammys <\/em>honored The Supremes <\/em><\/strong>with a Lifetime Achievement Award<\/em>.  This was not Diana Ross and the Supremes<\/em><\/strong>.  This was not even the 70s Supremes <\/em>\u2013 from which Diane plucked two backup singers for her Return to Love Tour<\/em><\/strong>.  No, the Grammys <\/em>paid tribute to the classic Supremes <\/em>lineup \u2013 Mary Wilson<\/strong>, Florence Ballard<\/strong>, and Diane Ross (as she was called).  Although they were nominated twice, The Supremes <\/em>never won a Grammy <\/em>(it should be added that Miss Ross never won one, either).  One would imagine that the sole surviving member would be there to graciously accept this honor.  And one would be wrong.  The award was accepted by two people \u2013 the daughter of Mary Wilson (who is also Diane\u2019s goddaughter) and one of Florence Ballard\u2019s daughters (the one Ross clutched at Flo\u2019s funeral).  You know who wasn\u2019t there?  Miss Ross!  Surely one of Diane\u2019s kids could have filled in.  OK, maybe not Tracee<\/strong>.  But what does Chudney <\/strong>have to do?  Or those Naess <\/strong>boys?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOnce again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny that permeates the world we live in.  A world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45.\u201d \u2013 Madonna.  I don\u2019t know what 45-year-old woman she\u2019s talking about.  Certainly it\u2019s not an autobiographical statement from the 64-year-old pop star.  If so,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91153,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91144\/revisions\/91153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}