Well, this is probably the most interesting thing to happen at Dealey Plaza since 1963: in her new video (see it here — thanks to the magic of pixilation, it’s safe for work), singer Erykah Badu takes all her clothes off and fakes being shot in the head on the very spot where JFK had his brains blown out.
Utterly, completely, nauseatingly tasteless. What will she do for her second single off the new album? Go to the balcony where MLK was shot and do the hoochie-koochie in her underwear?
I will say that it was a great surprise to me to visit Dealey Plaza for the first time and to observe how this infamous place was so … banal. I don’t know what I expected, really, but I expected more than an ugly intersection. It’s not even a plaza! The Grassy Knoll is just a small hill. The melodrama of Dealey Plaza loomed far greater in my imagination than in real life, as it turned out. Hard to think that the history of this nation, and in turn of the world, changed at that dull spot in the road. That, I think, has a lot to do with why JFK conspiracy theories thrive. We can’t deal easily with the fact that something so consequential can happen in such a nondescript place.