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Nice Jewish Boy Talks About America
Gene Simmons spoke at the Pentagon yesterday (yeah, that Gene Simmons). I heard some people mock the event because … well, because he normally wears makeup and dragon boots, but his speech is worth listening to. He talks about his mother and what America meant to her and his family. Touching stuff . . . really.
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Published in General
Okay, giving it a try.
Amazing how rough recalling something like that from childhood can be.
Gene has always spoken of his love for this country. It is only seconded by his love for his mother as seen here. God bless his heart. Things like this make me like him even more.
That was great. Just as great was the response of the audience. But I was told that conservatives were a bunch of squares.
Who knew?
Simmons can be surprisingly morally upright. For example, there was an episode of his reality show where he was really hesitant about taking a lie-detector test about whether he’d ever cheated on Shannon Tweed. It turned out that the reason he was so hesitant was because he hadn’t cheated on her in the 28 years they’ve been together, and he was afraid that if this became common knowledge it would hurt his reputation as a rock star.
I mean, to be fair, one can’t really judge a man from one episode of a reality tv show. It’s possible the whole thing was scripted. But still.
I also suppose one could cite it as an example of Charles Murray’s thesis that the 21st Century bourgeoisie doesn’t preach what it practices. Today’s bourgeoisie is happy to live upstanding lives, but is unwilling (or afraid) to promote such a lifestyle to others.
I admire some aspects of Gene Simmons. He is a capitalist fool (and I mean that in the best way!) He is a shrewd businessman and turned rock-n-roll into a business empire. Those KISS lunch boxes in elementary school – cha-ching!! He blazed the way for those who came after. He supports the military and tells things like it is. I’d love to host a dinner party with Jordan Peterson, Mark Steyn and Gene Simmons.
Given all we’ve learned about the lives of our bourgeoisie, I’m not sure that they actually do live upstanding lives. But Murray is right in that they certainly don’t promote it.
Vance,
To have survived a concentration camp and made it to the USA, you can imagine what seeing this on TV at the midnight signoff would have been like. Gd’s presence in the being of the USA would have been very very real to his mother. Gene needed more time to understand but he does now.
I remember this very well myself.
Regards,
Jim
To all,
Funny how it works sometimes. We learn something new about Gene Simmons and that leads us to learn other things even about ourselves. Here is something about the poem High Flight that I never knew.
Regards,
Jim
A lot of those guys are like that. Alice Cooper’s biggest vice is that he golfs a lot.
The morning radio show I listen to does a fair amount of “celebrity” interviews when people are pushing projects, but they’re really good interviewers and almost never actually ask about the project – just “What’ve you been doing this morning?” type questions. It’s interesting how many “rock stars” have just gotten back from dropping off their kids at school.
Dee Snider (from Twisted Sister) is an *awesome* interview – dude is seriously smart, and funny. He had a reality show a few years ago with his wife and kids. He was talking about it one time and how he was the most uptight person in his family – he kept wanting to take them into another room and remind them that there were cameras watching.
I can’t separate this phrase from Reagan’s Challenger speech. It brought me to my knees.
Witnessing what goes on backstage at a rock concert can affect different people in different ways. While some are attracted to what they witness, others are repulsed by it.
I admire Gene Simmons for stuff like this.
In fact, even as a little kid his was the first action-figure I asked my parents for after telling them I already knew elves weren’t dropping toys down our chimney-less house in Maimi. True story.
That was after years, though, of trying mightily to kill himself with booze and drugs.
Useless trivia: he used to live (and maybe still does), in Paradise Valley, AZ, not too far from Barry Goldwater’s house.
It always warms my heart to see patriotism show up in unexpected places. Great video.
One of my favorite KISS videos
That brings back memories! When I was a little kid in the 50s my dad taught me all those songs and we’d sing them together when he took me on drives on Sunday, the only day he didn’t work. The only difference was we sang “Army Air Corps”, in which he served, instead of “US Air Force”.
What fun! Sometimes my dad would just take us for a drive to get us out of my mom’s hair. With only an AM radio there was lots of singing. Lucky for us kids he had a great voice. My kids and grandkids are not so blessed with me …