Insanity Wrap: Now They've Gone and Ruined 'Grease'

“Grease” is the word that you’ll never want to hear again after you see what Paramount+ is doing to the classic show. That’s the big crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap — an entire week’s worth of lefty nuttiness wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow medicated news capsule.

Plus:

There’s pride, and then there’s whatever this teacher is doing.
Congressman Jim Clyburn really knows how to damn Joe Biden with faint praise.
This is not the civil rights protest you think it is.

Before we get to today’s big story, here’s a short video to make you lose whatever little faith you might still have in humanity.

This Is Not a Sane World, Exhibit #1,000,006

Teacher suggests students should pledge allegiance to the progress pride flag pic.twitter.com/ZzcvHjcETX

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 7, 2023

Yeah, no.

When my kids were in elementary school and Melissa and I would have that parent-teacher meeting at the start of the school year, I’d always confide in the teacher my half-joke/half-theory that education is a conspiracy between the parents and the teacher to get kids to learn stuff.

Now the parents and the kids have to conspire against teachers like this one.

Grease Is No Longer the Word

There’s nothing less woke than Grease.

It’s the charming tale of stupid high school kids at Rydell High School in 1959, played by actors ranging in age from “old enough for medical school” to “just joined middle management,” making bad decisions about love and sex. All the while, they’re singing songs with lyrics that were sometimes far dirtier than I appreciated at age 10.

The movie version also included a new title song by Frankie Valli, which is easily the best disco-infused ode to ’60s youth revolt for ’50s blue-collar kids ever.

There was even a nice message in Grease: There are square kids and there are cool kids, and they can all get along (and even fall in love) without having to change.

In short, Grease is a lot of somewhat naughty fun. It’s had millions of fans for five decades because stupid teens making stupid decisions about love and sex is about as timeless a story as can be. Even Shakespeare wrote about it way back when, in one of his lesser-known, barely remembered plays called Romeo and Juliet.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that the prequel TV series version — Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, streaming in April on Paramount+ — will have none of that broad-based, timeless appeal.

The new series is about the experiences of teenagers at Rydell High in 1954 with a “marginalized identity.” That’s according to one of the stars, Ari Notartomaso, who uses they/them pronouns because she’s too edgy for you squares.

Instead of being about teens being stupid about love and sex, as teens are wont to do, Notartomaso says all-new cast will “represent another struggle that overlaps with things we’re dealing with today, like racism.”

Because racism hadn’t been invented yet in the ‘50s.

Judging by the trailer, there will be oppressed marginalized kids and oppressive heteronormative kids, and the only way the oppressive heteronormative kids can stop being so fascist is to listen very hard to the marginalized kids singing and dancing about how they won’t be oppressed any longer.

They/thems just wanna have fun.

Streaming might be the worst thing to ever happen to television. Networks used to cater to the unwashed masses (that’s you and me, bub) by producing shows with broad appeal like M*A*S*H, The Cosby Show, and Friends. Movie studios, too.

The movies and shows with arthouse appeal either played at the arthouse downtown or to small audiences on PBS. The rise of home video was great because if you didn’t live in a big city with an arthouse theater, you could still watch the arthouse stuff if you were into that kind of thing.

Streaming services like Paramount+ and Disney+ have big studio dollars to play with but no need to appeal to mass audiences. So you get popular franchises — Grease, Scooby-Doo, The Witcher — getting ground down on streaming into low-appeal fare that wouldn’t last more than a week at the arthouse.

There is good news: The streaming services are losing money, lots of money. Disney+ lost $4 billion alone last year. Disney is in trouble, as I wrote for our VIPs yesterday.

Anything that can’t go on forever will stop, the wise man once said. And the big studios can only throw big money at small projects for so long.

Before We Continue, Here’s a Short Video to Restore Your Faith in Everything…

The man's dog was by his side the entire time he was in the hospital🫶 pic.twitter.com/9n6mwaePaL

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) February 4, 2023

I’m not crying; you’re crying.

A Ringing Endorsement… Not

“Dem Rep. Jim Clyburn on Biden’s Age: ‘I Have Seen A Lot Of 72-Yr-Olds Not As Capable As This 80-Yr-Old.'”

Good to know, sir!

Your Weekly Dose of Mandated Unity

(Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.)

Trans Lives Matter occupies Oklahoma capitol to protest bill criminalizing genital mutilation of minors

Adults suffering from gender dysphoria have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. Kids aren’t mature enough to make such decisions. The current science is that human brains aren’t fully developed until around age 25.

Therefore:

Trans activists gathered in the Oklahoma Capitol Monday to protest legislation that would prohibit the sterilization and mutilation of children. “Trans lives matter,” they chanted.

The legislative session began in the state on Monday, and lawmakers are expected to consider the Millstone Act, which would “prohibit Oklahoma doctors from providing gender transition procedures or referral services relating to such procedures to anyone under the age of 26.”

So of course there’s a protest.

I’m just not sure that standing up for child genital mutilation is quite the civil rights stance some people think it is.

Stop in the Name of Something, Anything

Madonna is only six months older than Susanna Hoff (Bangles)… Both photos are a day old. Tragic. pic.twitter.com/YXqAfOgC63

— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) February 6, 2023

Why, Madonna? WHY?

Previously On Insanity Wrap: We Need to Talk About That Trans Figure Skater

A quick little something before we get to Insanity Wrap’s closing meme…

I’m drunkblogging Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, of course. I can’t offer an effective one-man counter spin to the entire mainstream media, but I will provide one entertaining drunkblog before, during, and after the big speech.

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