Jay Sekulow via Twitter
Most people are writing about Trump attorney Jay Sekulow managing to screw up every interview he did on Sunday. While the customarily smooth lawyer’s meltdown — getting called out by Fox News of all people — left folks genuinely befuddled, the real embarrassment over the weekend was the discovery of the Jay Sekulow Band.
And, somehow it includes a former Kansas frontman turned Christian rocker. God how I miss the days when these people thought rock was Satan music.
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But we’re a long way from Dust in the Wind here. Some amateur rockers have bands that spit out bad BTO covers — it’s a diversion from their day jobs, no matter what awful garmonbozia they peddle on weekdays. Sekulow certainly does his share of that. But the Jay Sekulow Band is more an extension of his hard-right political beliefs. Spin Magazine has collected some of the biggest “hits” from the Jay Sekulow Band about Hillary Clinton’s email server:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zajoKA5ehMo
There’s more of this tripe over at Spin if you were looking for the perfect way to induce a violent ear bleeding today.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this in Morning Docket quoting an in-depth profile Nina Totenberg wrote of White House Counsel Don McGahn:
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A profile of Don McGahn that begins “By day, Don McGahn is a straight-laced lawyer, but by night, he’s a long-haired rocker.” Oh? An affluent middle aged white guy sublimates his sad existence through a Peter Pan complex… tell me more!
Why does anyone view this as a quirky nugget any more? Reporters should start dropping into their profiles “and in-between serving as managing partner and chairing the state GOP committee, he doesn’t fancy himself a rock star,” because once it’s an Onion parody, it’s moved firmly into the domain of cliché. Aging Boomers, particularly the affluent who take their financial success as an invitation to indulge their base narcissism, like to pretend they’re rock stars because rock stars are (were?) cool and they, decidedly, are not. As Colbert notes, Jay Sekulow looks like the lawyer from the Simpsons that animators created for the sole purpose of looking like a contemptible jerk.
But it’s more than that for these people. After all, rock stars — by and large — struggled, sleeping in vans to get where they were. Using your Amex Black Card to book the Four Seasons for your one-night only show in some bar’s basement is the pinnacle of their worldview that they are edgy when they take absolutely no risk at all to do what everyone else has to suffer for. If they can’t believe that everything comes easy, then how can they look with disdain on anyone who doesn’t have it?
On the other hand, who isn’t looking forward to the Jay Sekulow, Don McGahn, Mike Huckabee supergroup that will rock Trump’s 2021 inauguration?
Donald Trump’s Lawyer Plays in a Crappy Republican Rock Band With the Ex-Singer of Kansas [SPIN]
Jay Sekulow’s bizarre debut: Donald Trump picked a lawyer he saw on Fox News and it isn’t going well [Salon]
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.