That\u2019s the phrase Tom Barrack, chairman of Trump\u2019s inaugural committee, used on CNN this week to describe what was in store for the president-elect\u2019sinaugural events, including a concert early Thursday evening at the Lincoln Memorial officially billed as the \u201cMake America Great Again! Welcome Celebration.\u201d
Barrack had been asked whether Kanye West , who\u2019s spoken warmly of Trump, might show up to help mark the swearing-in. But though the rapper\u2019s star power would no doubt have been welcome \u2014 Thursday\u2019s headliners were the skilled but rusty country singer Toby Keith and the deeply irrelevant rock band 3 Doors Down \u2014 West wasn\u2019t invited to perform, Barrack revealed.
\u201cIt\u2019s not the venue,\u201d he said.
To some degree, this was typical and traditional Trump-team spin \u2014 a way to avoid acknowledging that one more A-list artist (even one as eagerly provocative as West) might have joined the long list of acts who reportedly declined the president-elect\u2019s request.
But Barrack\u2019s identification of West as somehow un-American \u2014 because he\u2019s black, one must infer \u2014 also indicates a troublingly narrow perspective thought to be widely held inside the new administration.
Whiteness was certainly the model of American identity at Thursday\u2019s concert, both onstage and in the audience.
It was a show that tried to project the promise of \u201ca renewed America,\u201d as actor Jon Voight put it in his opening remarks, with a bill that felt willfully old-fashioned \u2014 an embodiment of an earlier America in which nobody had to worry about the appearance (never mind the reality) of diversity.
Much of the throwback vibe was supplied by actual throwbacks, such as the Frontmen of Country, a not-so-supergroup comprising the lead singers of several country acts that haven\u2019t mattered for at least a decade, and 3 Doors Down, whose dreary lite-grunge hits sounded like they\u2019d been in cold storage since the early 2000s.
Then there was Lee Greenwood belting out \u201cGod Bless the U. S. A.\u201d for the zillionth time, which inspired an awkward singalong from Trump and assorted members of his family.
One concession to modernity came from the Piano Guys, an irritating group of musical comedians who developed a following on YouTube. Minus that backstory, though, they were just another representation of white middle-class prosperity \u2014 the kind Trump dangled grotesquely as a prize to \u201cthe inner cities\u201d in his brief closing address.
For the record, people of color were\u2019t invisible Thursday. Sam Moore, of the veteran R&B duo Sam & Dave, opened the show with a stately \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d accompanied by a large choir of African American singers.
And the Indian American DJ Ravidrums performed, though his fellow DJs might\u2019ve wished he hadn\u2019t: Flailing his arms behind a comically oversized drum kit, this dude was a musical embarrassment, as dubious an ambassador of electronic music as Trump\u2019s people could possibly find.
But neither of those artists enjoyed the prominent placement enjoyed by the other acts. Playing last, Keith did four songs, including the rowdy \u201cBeer for My Horses,\u201d which you had to admire given the sanitized jollity of everything that preceded it.
Indeed, Keith is smarter and more daring than the boot-stomping caricature he encourages. Here he almost made you wonder if he was trolling Trump with his song \u201cAmerican Soldier\u201d and its vision of a \u201csteady\u201d man not looking for glory.
Yet there was no more room for nuance Thursday than there was for the kind of American-ness that Barrack had more or less disavowed.
As Keith finished with \u201cCourtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),\u201d you could hear him striving to widen the emotion of that post-9\/11 song \u2014 to make it available to anyone who might feel protective of this country.
Hopefully his effort wasn\u2019t in vain.
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«Manchester By the Sea» director Kenneth Lonergan discusses writing a quiet character and working with actor Casey Affleck to bring him to life.<\/p>\n