Despite a few more recognisable names (er, Kid Rock) due to appear than last time, this will not be the cultural event of the year<\/p>\n
In the quaintly upsetting era of George W Bush\u2019s presidency, there was something people liked to pompously call the \u201ccultural opposition\u201d. This was made up of figures in popular culture pushing back against Bush, and 20 years later it may be imagined their spiritual heirs are limbering up for equivalent duties. The first formal opportunity falls next week with Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration and, just as leaders in the tech and business worlds have failed spectacularly<\/a> to rally against him, so a sense prevails that among certain artists and influencers there has been a gentle softening of spines too.<\/p>\n This is a general observation and also one located in the figure of Carrie Underwood, the country star scheduled to sing<\/a> the national anthem in Trump\u2019s honour on Monday. Underwood, a 41-year-old who came to prominence via the fourth season of American Idol, may seem a slim figure on whom to hang observations about the waning of cultural opposition towards Trump. There persists a feeling, however, that in 2016, no singer-songwriter of Underwood\u2019s prominence would have offered her services to the Trump administration. Back then, when Trump\u2019s election struck many in the US and around the world with the force of an out-of-body experience, the best the inauguration committee could come up with was another talent-show graduate and holder of the unfortunate mantle \u201cformer child star\u201d, Jackie Evancho<\/a>.<\/p>\n Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite a few more recognisable names (er, Kid Rock) due to appear than last time, this will not be the cultural event of the year In the quaintly upsetting era of George W Bush\u2019s presidency, there was something people liked to pompously call the \u201ccultural opposition\u201d. This was made up of figures in popular culture … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}