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child pornography. He was not tried for rape. He was acquitted of making child pornography. He’s never been tried in court for rape, but look at the statistics. The numbers of rapes that happened, the numbers of rapes that were reported, the numbers of rapes that make it to court and then the conviction rate.
    I mean, it comes down to something minuscule. He’s never had his day in court as a rapist. It’s 15 years in the past now, but this record exists. You have to make a choice, as a listener, if music matters to you as more than mere entertainment. And you and I have spent our entire lives with that conviction. This is not just entertainment, this is our lifeblood. This matters.

PART TWO: REAL/FAKE
     

GAGA TAKES A TRIP
    Nashville Scene , April 2011
     
    There’s this photo. In it, Lady Gaga is framed tight, center of the picture, shot from far away by staked-out paparazzi, perhaps hiding out behind a row of chairs or a ficus. There are blurred objects around the edges, and there are frames within the frames—distant glass security cordons. The dark, lumpy figure of a TSA agent looms to the left, hands near the star, extended rigidly, officially. Lady Gaga does not acknowledge the camera: She is not looking at it, but there is no part of her presentation that does not anticipate the camera’s gaze, and subsequently, ours as well.
    Lady Gaga is taking a trip and has arrived at Los Angeles International Airport in full pop regalia. She is not like the other blond pop singers—Madonna or Jessica Simpson—who deplane in comfort sweats, their makeup-free faces looking strangely unfamiliar, a ponytail sticking out from their ball cap. Gaga does not dress like she is headed home from a yoga workshop even when flying across the continent. Gaga teases out the fan fantasy of the pop star by never dropping the act—she’s like a superhero, never appearing out of uniform. She never snaps us back to reality; we stay with her in the weird, glamorous world she has made real.
    In this, she is conceding the duality of pop stardom: this is all surface and finessed-to-please presentation, an impossible manufacture. She one-ups all those who decry her work and platinum pop as not “real” music—because it’s all “fake”—by making it the most fabulous fake that ever faking faked . To be sure, Gaga’s “fake” is at least as real as the “real” of any self-conscious Brooklyn beardo ‘bout to be discovered by Pitchfork.
    Here, amid her TSA-administered security screening, Gaga is looking spectacular—as in, like a spectacle, which is how we want her to be—and she is not disappointing. She is wearing perilously-tall (10-inch) Alexander McQueen snakeskin platform heels, which the designer is said to have modeled after an armadillo. Their fronts arch from the ankle in a smooth half moon that is blunted by the floor, like a toucan’s bill if it pointed down instead of out. They are leathery and gleam in the light, and they look unlike shoes anyone’s ever seen. Their protrusion is strange, but there is something natural to the line—it’s easy to think them as hooves. Gaga’s legs are covered only by what appears to be industrial-strength fishnet pantyhose that go up under her shiny black belt. Looped through the right front of the belt is a pair of metal handcuffs. Her flowing white wig cascades down to her stomach, she wears round, Lennon-style sunglasses, there is a phone in her hand. Most of her outfit is accessories, the only clothing she has on is a pair of “nude” bikini underwear and a bra, and a golden jacket, of which she is wearing only one sleeve, with the other half seemingly tucked into her back waistband—a curious slip of modesty to cover one’s ass while appearing nearly naked in public.
    In this picture, we see Gaga as White Swan to out-of-control Britney Spears’ Black Swan. This outfit is similar to the one worn by Spears in summer of 2008, in one of the bleaker paparazzi shots taken