Idle Idols Celebrate Influential Impotence

She Said ~ 

Tone-deaf:  a genuine inability to perceive pitch differences in music, or a lack of awareness or sensitivity to social cues and the impact of one’s words or actions on others. 

Admittedly, this is a strange way to describe the 2025 Tony Awards, but it is accurate.

Before my very eyes, the gifted and the talented applauded, danced, joked and pranced across the night’s stage. Acceptance speeches were given with endless lists of faceless people thanked. Hungry cameras panned to the audience in search of emotion or orchestrated moments of humanity. 

Instead, it was the same ol’ business with the same ol’ message, at least to me. The tight-lipped penguin suits and disco ball gowned attendees remained cool as cucumbers while the city of angels, home to their tinseltown, wept. The rich and the famous applauded the glamor and the drama of hardship. Their white toothy smiles rewarded rehearsed struggle. 

The ten or eleven wardrobe changes by the host, Cynthia Erivo, highlighted “fast fashion.” Here today and gone tomorrow.

During the ceremony, four awards were earned by The Buena Vista Social Club, a musical that “follows a group of young musicians in 1950s Havana, who create a sound that shakes the world of Cuban music.” It features a cast telling the story of survival, second chances, and the power of song.

This powerful celebration of the Afro-Cuban contributions, endurance and struggle deserved a moment of pause and reflection. In today’s climate, the fight for survival, equality and visibility is worthy of our gaze and protestation.

On this night, history had its eyes on you, and you all missed your shot.

He Said ~

Another week, another plethora of improbable news tales; from Erivo’s lack of backbone, to rfk jr.’s insidiousness, to the Steelers idiotic signing of the ignoramus known as A-aron, to restrictions on traveling, to the gratuitous appearances, by the endlessly self-aggrandizing shill, a.k.a Oprah, to the sheer madness of life right now.

British actress and singer Cythia Erivo is a good example of the aforementioned insanity. While obviously talented, it appears to me there is no cause more imperative to Erivo than herself. She had the world’s stage at her feet but chose to banter with ‘Harpo’ and partake in “playing off” a worthy actress, with her warbling of “My Way,” as opposed to offering any statements of conviction. 

Kara Young won her second Tony Award at the 2025 ceremony for her performance in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ stage play, Purpose. While Young was delivering her emotional speech at the ceremony, Erivo’s audio started playing.

The award show host for the year had previously announced that anyone taking more than 90 seconds for their acceptance speech would be cut off by her singing. 

Meanwhile, Young’s second consecutive win made history, (she became the first African-American performer to win back-to-back Tony’s). In her acceptance speech, the Broadway star said, “In this world that is so divided, theater is a safe, a sacred space, that we have to honor and cherish, and it makes us united.”

Thank You Ms. Young! While Erivo was out purchasing toy cars for a juvenile joke with Hollywood’s biggest fraud – (sorry, but no amount of weight-loss prescriptions can get rid of that enormous quantity of hot air Gayle King’s meal ticket possesses) – you decided to actually write something of value.

Being a fan of Broadway and a lifelong supporter of the arts, Sunday night was a monumental disappointment. I comprehend the need not to turn these shows into endless displays of angst and politicalization of the times; however, perhaps a smidgen of sensibility is as important as a whisper of the cliched safety of hair peeking out of one’s ball gown. 

Did You Know? The Godfather actor was not at the ceremony to accept his Best Actor statue in 1973. To protest the siege at Wounded Knee and the depiction of Native Americans in television and film, Marlon Brando sent the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, Sacheen Littlefeather, in his place.

Brando gave the Apache activist a 15-page speech to read, but she saved it for the press room and instead improvised an onstage address after she was warned not to go over her time.

“Brando very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry,” Littlefeather said, drawing a mixed reaction from the crowd, “and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, meet with love and generosity.”

The Academy banned accepting awards by proxy after the demonstration.