A Moment of Pause: Modern Musical at the White House

A little insight into the Amazing World of The Signal Watch...

I was working out and in my bedroom (yes, I do workout.  Shut up.) and on our local PBS affiliate I was watching "A Tribute to Broadway at the White House" or some such.  Anyway, the President and First Lady (and First Kids) were sitting in a ballroom at the White House watching Broadway performers like Nathan Lane, Idina Menzel and Audra McDonald perform. 

My Signal Corps, The League is not afraid to admit he likes a good show tune, even out of context.  And the final song was part youth chorus/ part from-the-traveling-production-of Hairspray the Musical, "You Can't Stop the Beat".  And I stopped and pondered for a minute.

We live in a land where a guy like John Waters (a guy who was such an outsider to American culture that he made a career out of celebrating that fact) can, within twenty five years of the release of the original Hairspray, see a story he created transmorgified into a musical and performed in a ballroom of the White House.  This is the guy who made Divine a nationally known figure and made the best use of Debby Harry in a movie ever and gave us the best tribute to Don Knotts ever seen in a movie... 

That, people, is the America I celebrate.