Alert: Controversy ahead

Lana Del Rey is, apparently, a pariah these days. And Kamala Harris’ photo on the cover of Vogue is “a washed-out mess.” Excuse me for not noticing either of these things before today. Celebrity interviews and fashion magazines aren’t exactly at the top of my priority list.

I’ve been a bit preoccupied with other things. You know, little things like the future of democracy in the world’s most powerful nation, a nasty virus called COVID-19 (you may have heard of it), and our inability to denounce a dangerously bitter and unstable man in the White House who foments violence and endangers my public safety, along with everyone else’s.

So, excuse me if I don’t get up in arms over how Kamala Harris looked on the cover of a magazine I don’t read or what Lana Del Rey said in defending the cover of an album I’ve never listened to.

Do I agree that Harris’ blue-blazer digital photo looks better than the one that appeared on the physical cover of the mag? Yeah, I do. But excuse me for not caring about fashion-mag aesthetics when I’m watching images of a rabid mob of insurrectionists attacking the Capitol.

Tone deaf?

I’d heard of Del Rey before, but I’ve never heard any of her music (that I know of), and I didn’t know anything about her before this week. But apparently, she said some things in an interview with BBC Radio 1 (the relevant section starts about 49 minutes in) and Instagram post that Spin magazine considered “tone-deaf.”

What was her great offense?

Was it calling Donald Trump a “live-television psychopath crazy person”? Nope. I’m right there with her on that one.

Did she give Trump a pass on the pandemic? She didn’t: “When they got rid of the contagious disease sector of the White House, I was like, ‘We’ll never make it.’”

Was it her assertion that the world’s biggest problem “is not climate change, but sociopathy and narcissism — especially in America”?

She may have a point. There’s a case to be made that cultural narcissism is at the root of climate change, especially in the United States. We’re too busy staring at an idealized vision of who we think we are to notice we’re destroying the environment.

Then there was this: “As bad as it was, (the Capitol insurrection) really needed to happen” so we could reflect on that narcissism.

Umm, no. It didn’t need to happen — and it wouldn’t have happened if we’d been more aware. But I think that’s what Del Rey was trying to say: that we needed a wake-up call. That’s the tragic part. We shouldn’t need our democracy to be threatened within an inch of its life to maybe figure out (it’s still an open question whether we will) that we need to act. We shouldn’t need that kind of wake-up call. We should be a hell of a lot better than that. So no, it didn’t need to happen. But it did. That’s the problem.

Spin, however, put a much more judgmental spin (pun intended) on her words, asserting that “in her eyes, the politics of the last four years haven’t been all that terrible.”

She didn’t say that. The writer of the article did. That’s bad journalism.

Who cares?

What might have seemed problematic to critics was Del Rey’s assertion that Trump didn’t know he was inciting a riot, but that he’s “unwell” and “because he’s got delusions of grandeur.” Yeah, I can see how that would piss people off, because it suggests that Trump isn’t responsible for his actions. But experts have been debating Trump’s state of mind for years: Is he just snowing people, or does he really believe this B.S.? Is his ego so fragile that he believes his own lies?

Democrats even called for Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, charging that Trump is unfit to continue in office.

Those Democrats aren’t experts on mental health, and neither is Del Rey. She’s a celebrity with an opinion, and it’s not definitive, but that doesn’t make it baseless or irrational. If her tone comes across as detached in the interview, that doesn’t make her an idiot. And if she’s analyzing tragedies from an outside perspective, how does that make her any worse than the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC?

Some of the backlash was built on criticism that the cover to her latest album, Chemtrails over the Country Club, wasn’t diverse enough, and her self-described image as a “glamorous person.” It’s entirely possible to see her, rightly or wrongly, as a privileged brat, and to dismiss her ideas because of perception.

But here’s a novel idea: Del Rey, as an artist, is under no obligation to create an album cover that fits anyone’s definition of diverse. If her album cover is enough to sour you on listening, don’t buy it. That’s not “cancel culture,” it’s consumer freedom. But one album cover shouldn’t define a person, and neither should one interview, or one out-of-context quote within that interview.

I personally love diverse album covers, films, and other forms of art. Do I think every artistic expression needs to be diverse — and condemned if it’s not? No, I don’t. Hey, there’s not a single man on the cover of Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Should I be offended at that? (That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is I shouldn’t be, and I’m not.)

Liberal privilege

Some argue that Del Rey has a history of flaunting her white privilege. But what about liberal privilege? If you have time to sit around nitpicking fashion mag photos and micromanaging album covers when the country is falling apart around you, I question your priorities. In fact, it’s this very behavior that reinforces conservative critiques that you belong to a cultural elite that’s detached from working-class reality.

People who are struggling to make enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table probably don’t care about Kamala Harris’ photo or fashion magazines in general, and they may not care one way or another what Lana Del Rey thinks. To working-class people, criticisms like this appear to come from out-of-touch cultural snobs with too much time on their hands. They reinforce the false stereotype peddled by Trumpists that no one cares about them, and that they need to “take their country back” — by force if necessary.

Working-class people, especially those in rural America, feel ignored by liberals too busy judging the Lana Del Reys and Vogues of this world to even notice the plight of these individuals. That’s what things like “political correctness” means to them, and they don’t like it.

Is it any surprise that Trump and his racist minions have twisted that term to justify hatred, in much the same way they’ve used the First Amendment as a shield for hate speech and the Second Amendment to justify violence? Is it any wonder that they’ve co-opted that feeling of alienation to radicalize disgruntled working-class Americans, transforming some into hate-spewing insurrectionists?

I’m not casting the blame for racism at the feet of liberal America. On the contrary, progressives have taken the lead in fighting it. But I am suggesting that quibbling about photo shoots and parsing celebrity “takes” while the nation is crumbling doesn’t help. It just reinforces the stereotype of liberals and progressives as elitists who prefer to shame and condemn others than work to build bridges and find solutions.

The point is liberals can be tone-deaf, too.

Stephen H. Provost is the author of “50 Undefeated: Overcoming Prejudice With Grace and Courage, available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/2XGMMwf.