Here, appropriately enough for the day, is a labor of Questlove that opened his excellent documentary Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. You can watch the mashup montage directly in his Instagram post or as embedded a couple of paragraphs into an article on the NBC website. The entire thing re-airs tomorrow night, Feb. 15th, from 8 to 11 p.m. ET on the network and is streamable on Peacock.
John MacDonald is credited as editor of the montage, and Oz Rodríguez as co-
director on the special. Questlove’s 2021 doc Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, is for my money one of the best films of the decade, period, and not just because I hadn’t seen Marilyn McCoo in too long; you can watch it on Hulu.
I did the absolute bare minimum in support of our democracy on January 6th,
2021: I bore witness. Sat down in front of my TV set to experience what’s supposed to be a mere, if potent, formality and stayed there all day long. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears.
How anyone watching footage of the assault then or now can honestly describe it as a peaceful expression of free speech is beyond me.
I and every other American would have been collateral damage if the rioters who overran the Capitol had successfully forced the United States Congress to halt its proceedings in some indefinite fashion. The people actually placing their lives on the line, however, were both those like the police who chose a career that puts them in a position to run towards danger, or stand as a bulwark against it, and citizens such as the Congressional staffers whose job it is to keep the cogs of government moving as smoothly as possible. We owe it to them and ourselves to never let what truly, clearly happened be forgotten, and so I do this; I share these words, reeling with turmoil over the knowledge that consequences have been avoided by too many who belittled, distorted, and outright lied about the horrific events of that day, but hoping that with enough of us speaking up and simply pointing to what the cameras saw history will get it right.
