Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1094

The Man Who Held Four Firefighters Hostage in a Foreclosed Home Is Dead

Officials in Gwinnett County, Georgia won't say why a gunman took four of local firefighters hostage in a Fannie Mae-owned house on Wednesday afternoon. But based on that Fannie Mae detail, you can venture a guess. Regardless of the reason, though, it's a dangerous situation that only appeared more dangerous a little after 7:30, when some reported hearing a "multiple blasts" in the neighborhood. Soon thereafter paramedics were seen working on someone, and two ambulances was seen leaving the area. Moments later, we learned that the gunman was dead, and one police officer was being rushed to the hospital after having been shot and the hostages were freed with "superficial wounds."

The incident began with the fire department responded to "some type of medical call" and rushed to the scene in Suwannee with an ambulance, a fire engine and five firefighters a little before 4:00 p.m. "There was no indication or any reason to believe that there would be a violent situation," Gwinnett County Fire Department spokesman Thomas Rutledge later told the press. But a violent situation is what they got. Update 7:45 p.m.: In a press briefing after the firefighters had been rescued, Rutledge explained that the SWAT team set off the explosion and rushed into the house to rescue the firefighters. A gunfight ensued, and soon thereafter, the hostage-taker was dead. "We got to the point where we felt like the lives of the firefighters were in immediate danger." He added that the suspect had demanded his power, cable and cell phone service be restored. It's unclear why it was off.

The suspect clearly wants something. Once they were inside the house, he took the five firefighters hostage at gunpoint, though he let one go so he could drive the truck back to the station. (We're guessing that was in case there was an actual fire.) Word obviously got out that the other firefighters were being held, so a SWAT team and "several" hostage negotiators were dispatched to the scene. It's unclear if they made any progress over the course of the next three hours when Rutledge gave his press conference. The blast reports came just a few minutes after that.

So what's the deal? The local NBC station offers a clue: "According to property tax records, the home where the firefighters are being held hostage was foreclosed on November 2012. After the house was foreclosed on, the mortgage switched hands from Wells Fargo to Fannie Mae." Is it a protest from someone who lost his home? Or just an act of rage? We'll find out soon enough and update you.

       

Carson Daly Is Safe from Alec Baldwin (For Now)

Contrary to crazy reports, Alec Baldwin will not be on your television while you are fast sleep—at least not yet: NBC announced this afternoon that Last Call with Carson Daly, the show you did not know was still on, has been renewed for a 13th.

The news isn't too surprising given that Baldwin was only in the "initial stages" of discussion, as The New York Times's Bill "Late Shift" Carter reported last night. But it does put a damper on those rumors for a while, unless suddenly the Daly vs. Baldwin becomes Leno vs. Conan all over again. (That would be exhausting.) 

NBC's major late night shake ups will happen following the 2014 Winter Olympics when Fallon assumes Leno's spot at The Tonight Show. That leaves Fallon's spot at Late Night open, possibly going to Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers stepping in.   

Still, it must be a relief for Daly, since the news of Baldwin possibly coming in reminded everyone that they don't really care about the former TRL host's super-early-morning gig, even though he is an important part of NBC's family. He hosts the struggling network's true hit show The Voice. Though certainly no one is turning into The Voice simply to see Daly, that's a formula the network likely does not want to mess with. News of his renewal comes awfully suspiciously close on the heels of those Baldwin rumors. Makes you think there might be some attempt to quell any sort of Daly uprising. 

       

How Bad Was the McConnell Recording? Watergate Bad or Gestapo Bad?

Let it never be said that American national politics lacks a flair for exaggeration. After a recording of a strategy session at Senator Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign was released by Mother Jones magazine, the event was quickly analogized to whatever nefarious history was close at hand. It is almost as though political actors were hoping to score political points off of a relative non-event.

The comparison: Watergate

What it was: A 1972 break-in at a Washington hotel targeting the Democratic campaign working to unseat President Nixon. The burglars intended to plant listening devices in the space.

Who's making the reference:

Brad Dayspring of the National Republican Senatorial Committee:

What's with the Watergate tactics? RT @justinbarasky: Secret tape: Mitch McConnell aides discuss Ashley Judd bit.ly/10OAA7m #kysen

— Brad Dayspring (@BDayspring) April 9, 2013

Glenn Thrush of Politico:

This really is like Watergate: If tape of McConnell aides trashing Judd came via illegal bug FBI needs to investigate motherjones.com/politics/2013/…

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) April 9, 2013

Mitch McConnell himself:

McConnell did not reveal any other details about how he knows who was behind the secret taping. He did say the secret taping is “much like Nixon and Watergate.”

“That’s what the political left does these days,” he said.

How apt is it: While America always likes throwing a "-gate" on the end of any political uproar, this one prompted a lot of references to the full scandal itself. It doesn't fit. Watergate was an illegal burglary authorized by a sitting president. There's no indication that any break-in took place at McConnell's office, much less that Obama asked that it happen. (Should that be revealed, we will happily revise our assessment.)

The comparison: Richard Nixon

What it was: The president of the United States who authorized the Watergate break-in. And who also secretly recorded visitors to the Oval Office and conversations held in the White House. Those tapes included conversations implicating Nixon in a conspiracy to cover up the Watergate break-in.

Who's making the reference:

Mitch McConnell (see above).

How apt is it: Oddly, it would have been more apt if McConnell had known about the recording and confessed to criminal activity. He didn't. It's a weaker analogy than the Watergate one.

The comparison: The Gestapo

What it was: Nazi Germany's secret police.

Who's making the reference:

The manager of McConnell's Senate campaign:

“We’re very grateful that the FBI is very quick to address this…we’re going to make sure that this is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This kind of stuff just has no place in a free society,” Jesse Benton, who suggested the private meeting had been illegally bugged, said on former GOP Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s radio program.

Benton continued: “This kind of stuff just has no place in a free society, governor. This is Gestapo kind of scare tactics. We’re not going to stand for it. Kentuckians shouldn’t stand for it and the American people regardless of their personal political persuasion should not stand for this.”

How apt is it: The Gestapo thing aside, it's not clear how this is a scare tactic. Who's meant to be scared? McConnell?

But, regardless: The Gestapo played a critical role in establishing a fear-based system of informing that led to rampant murder across occupied Europe. The kind of scare tactics the Gestapo used included kidnapping people and executing them. Leaking a recording of a meeting held in a Louisville office complex doesn't quite match up.

Even if there was a bug in the McConnell's campaign office, I would venture to say the Gestapo did far worse. politi.co/154mbtf

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 10, 2013

Special bonus comparison: Kim Jong Un

What it is: The dictatorial leader of the North Korean police state.

Who's making the reference:

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy, in relation to McConnell's pledge to filibuster new gun legislation:

Kim Jong Un is no Mitch McConnell. Because Kim, even with his nuclear weapons, is hardly likely to launch an attack on Americans anywhere given that the response would produce the instant and certain obliteration of his regime. What that means is that for all his bluster, the chubby little autocrat is very unlikely to cost one American his life. But in vowing to block any vote on even the most modest legislation to rein in America's out-of-control gun culture, the Senate minority leader all but guarantees that the toll in America's street-corner war will continue to rise.

How apt is it: Senators can only dream of having dictatorial decision-making power.

       

The Bipartisan Immigration Plan Is 20 Years of Torture

Only when dealing with immigration do both parties abandon all promises to cut frustrating bureaucratic red tape and instead race each other to insist on more of it. The plan to be unveiled soon by the bipartisan "gang of eight" senators includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is an intentionally arduous bureaucratic labyrinth that will take 20 years to crawl through. President Obama's plan offered a mere eight years of torture. 

The National Review's Katrina Trinko has the early details. The plan gives illegal immigrants two options:

A) Go to their home country and wait five years to apply for a green card; or,

B) Stay in the U.S. and apply for temporary legalization status.

Option B is bureaucratic torture porn. There are several steps. 

Step I: Wait for the Mexican border to be really secure. Immigrants will have to wait for the government to begin implementing several security measures, such as:

Tracking all immigrants at airports to make sure they don't overstay their visas.  The Mexican border will be policed at all times by drones. (The Canadian border won't be tampered with.) The Department of Homeland Security will have six months to come up with a drone plan. After five years, the department must be droning at full capacity. Require all businesses to use e-Verify to check employees' immigration status.

Step II: Documentation. Immigrants must:

Prove they've lived here two years straight, which can be proven by things like utility bills or medical bills.  Pass a background check. Speeding tickets are OK, felonies are not.  Maybe prove they're not in a gang. "One contentious issue among the senators is whether immigrants who are clearly part of gangs but who have no criminal record will be allowed to obtain legal status," Trinko reports. Prove they make enough money to live here -- an income of something like 125 percent of the federal poverty level. 

Step III: Show them the money. Immigrants must:

Pay a fine and back taxes. The fine will be more than a couple hundred bucks but less than $10,000. If immigrants can't pay up front, they can have the fine taken out of their payroll taxes.

Step IV: Stay employed! And get private health insurance. And don't have any accidents.

Immigrants can't be unemployed for more than six months.  Immigrants who need federal assistance -- presumably this means food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, disability, etc. -- have to go home.  Immigrants who get status under this law are forbidden from getting Obamacare's benefits. Trinko doesn't say what this means. No subsidies to buy private health care plans? Parents can't keep 25-year-olds on their insurance plans? Obamacare's Medicaid expansion covers people earning up to 139 percent of the federal poverty level. So that would mean a single immigrant earning, say, 133 percent of the federal poverty level  -- $15,282 a year -- can stay here but can't get Medicaid. 

Step V: Chill for 10 years. A decade after the border is truly secure, these immigrants can apply for green cards.

Step VI: Wait 3 to 5 more years. That's how long green card holders have to wait to apply for citizenship.

If everything worked perfectly, immigrants could be citizens in 13 years. But 20 years is more realistic, Trinko reports. The Washington Examiner's Conn Carroll is skeptical the U.S. will actually have the stomach to deport immigrants just because they lose their jobs or become disabled. "It’s a monstrous idea. And it will never happen," he writes. We're not so sure. It's a catchy slogan: "Give me your tired, your poor... well poor but not too poor. Above my official poverty line, please."

       

Adrien Brody to Become Magician

Today in show business news: History is doing a miniseries about Houdini with TV actor Adrien Brody, Julie Taymor gets her Spider-Man money, and fans of Zack Morris can rejoice.

The channel called History, formerly known as The History Channel, is developing a miniseries about Harry Houdini that will star Oscar-winner Adrien Brody as the famous magician. So... is that a coup for History, or a step down for Brody? Or both? I guess it could be both. Though, we shouldn't knock History. They've had grand success recently, what with The Bible and Hatfields & McCoys. So maybe this is a good thing for Adrien Brody. I mean plenty of big-name actors are doing TV these days. Sure, most of them are doing HBO or FX or whatever, but Sigourney Weaver did USA for god's sake. And Kevin Costner was in Hatfields. Is Adrien Brody bigger than Kevin Costner? I think not. Man, do we (read: I) have a lot of conflicted opinions about Adrien Brody. Lotta turmoil trying to decide just what that dude's career is. All told I think he's done pretty well, but he gets a bad rap so often that it's hard not to believe it. Anyway. What were we talking about? Oh, right. Houdini. Too bad he didn't look much like Adrien Brody. He was more of a young Victor Garber. But, oh well. Adrien Brody it is. [Entertainment Weekly]

Now that she's done with Weeds and finished filming Red 2, Mary-Louise Parker can return to the New York stage. And she's doing just that in a play called The Snow Geese, by Sharr White. In the play she'll be a mother trying to keep her family together during WWI. She's got two teen sons, just like on Weeds, and she'll be newly widowed, just like on Weeds. So it's Weeds: WWI Edition. That's fine! Nothing wrong with that. Parker will be directed by her Proof director Daniel Sullivan, which could spell good things. The show begins previews on October 1st at the Friedman. [Playbill]

While on the topic of theater, Julie Taymor has reached a settlement with the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, whom she sued for profits after being fired from the disastrous production. Well, disastrous in terms of quality, not in terms of ticket sales. The ticket sales are enormous. And Taymor wanted some of that sweet, sweet spider money. It seems she finally got some, but the amount is not being disclosed. How much you want to guess? A couple thou? Three grand and a bus ticket? Who knows. But whatever it is, you can be sure it's big. [The New York Times]

Sorry, ladies and gays. You may not get to see Alexander Skarsgard shimmying around in a loin cloth as Tarzan after all. Though things were once lining up well for the movie, with Harry Potter director David Yates on board and Jessica Chastain nearing a deal to costar, the production office has been shut down and plans to make make the movie this year have been scrapped. Apparently the budget was too high, and they couldn't figure out a way to lower it. Probably because Skargard's loin cloths would have to be spun out of pure witch's gold lest his powerful Swedish netherparts burn a hole in the fabric. Or, I dunno, CGI vine technology is expensive. So, oh well. A new Tarzan movie probably would have been kind of dumb anyway. Skarsgard and Chastain should do another movie together, though. The Pale People of Transluscentania or something. Pitch that to Yates, guys. I'm sure he'll go for it. [Deadline]

SPOILER ALERT. Specifically, DEXTER SPOILER ALERT: Actress Yvonne Strahovski, who played Dexter's murderous girlfriend last season, will be back for next season. It's unclear for how many episodes or in what capacity, but Hannah will be back. Which isn't that surprising, really. She did that creepy thing toward the end of the finale, so it's not like they were just going to drop her character entirely. I just want to know how many episodes. That will give us a clue as to whether she lives, dies, live happily ever after with Dex, etc. This is the last season of the show, so anything could happen! Masuka and Angel probably won't hook up, but other than that, yeah anything could go down. [Entertainment Weekly]

Attention, Franklin & Bash fans! So, attention Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer's families: TNT has moved the show's third season premiere date from July 24 to June 19. Meaning we get some good Franklin & Bash business sooner than expected! That is terrific. God is good, man. God is good. Franklin & Bash is god, is what I'm saying. [Deadline]

Salman Rushdie revealed in a comment discussion on Gawker today (yes, that is a thing that happened) that he has a pilot "floating around" at Showtime that he's waiting for a greenlight on. Good lord, meaning good Franklin & Bash, what could a Salman Rushdie Showtime pilot possibly be about? That is intriguing and exciting and unsettling all at once. Is it about Padma? Please Franklin & Bash let it be about Padma. [Gawker]

       

Jay-Z Is Making Philadelphia Good Again

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

Budweiser and Jay-Z have teamed up once again for the 2013 incarnation of their Made in America festival, an annual attempt to make Philadelphia nightlife not terrible. So here's what the City of Brotherly Love's mosh pits look like in corporate beer goggles

We're not even going to pretend to understand the sick minds that concocted this Kim Jong-un video, butit's safe to say that the majority of North Koreans have not and will not see it, ever: 

Intense, yeah? Let's sit back and relax with this seal. 

And finally: chickens.

       

Confessions of a Former 'Senior Washed-Up Girl'

It's a bizarre feeling when an inside joke—not even necessarily your inside joke, but an inside joke you adopted—suddenly becomes fodder for trend pieces. Suddenly something you thought was behind you—that you may not have ascribed to so simply, or at least been able to describe to a reporter—is back out there, for all to ridicule. That's what happened when I saw the piece on so-called "SWUGs" over at New York's The Cut today.

SWUG, for the uninitiated, is a self-aware label meaning "Senior Washed-Up Girl." At its most basic level the phrase refers to female college seniors, who, with one foot out the door, simply "don't give a fuck." The pre-SWUG cares about the impressions she makes; the SWUG aims low. It's a term popular at Yale (my alma mater) that pissed me off at first, but which I came to embrace, only to watch it become yet another way for writers on the Internet (not unlike me) to talk about the state of young women today, which is apparently the age of endless "leaning in." Following a piece in the Yale Daily News by Raisa Bruner (full disclosure: a friend), New York's Justin Rocket Silverman went to Yale to investigate this alleged trend, only to have most commenters savage it, some argue that the "trend" was nothing new, others insult the women in the story, and Yalies on social media generally roll their eyes at the whole thing. 

I first heard about the term SWUG during my junior year when I was working at the Daily News. From what I can recall, it was described to me as having been coined by a group of girls in the senior class, and I hated it. Yale had been debating treatment of women on campus all year—the school was about to face a Title IX investigation—and the idea of calling any girls on campus "washed-up" was to me offensive and demeaning (the specific words I used in a heated Gchat conversation), even if some fellow women had used the label on themselves.

But I changed my mind on SWUGs as I sort of realized I was one. Looking back through my Gmail inbox today, I crossed into my senior year, when, for me and my friends, SWUG came to be a way we described an attitude that we already possessed. SWUG meant getting meatball subs on a snowy night. SWUGs watched an episode of New Girl twice in a row with a lot red wine. SWUGs baked brownies. In our version of SWUG, an idol might be Liz Lemon, to whom Jack Donaghy once said: "Big night, Lemon? Let me guess meatball sub extra, bottle of NyQuil, TiVo Top Chef, a little miss Bonnie Raitt, lights out." My fellow would-be SWUGs and I listened to a lot of "I Can't Make You Love Me." We cared about our academics and our future careers, but when it came to our social lives in the confines of Yale, well, we, as seniors, couldn't care less.

Like so many other generalizations rooted in reality, a SWUG is complicated because there is, hard as trend pieces might try, no single definition. There is no one type of SWUG. Just look at the conflicting Daily News columns that attempted to bring SWUG into public light. For some it means being the last one at the party. For others it means not going to the party at all. There's something inherently negative about being "washed-up," and yet something positive about self-labeling. Much described in Bruner and Silverman's pieces was not the SWUGdom which which I became familiar during my senior year. I didn't go to frat parties, didn't ever really care about hooking up. But Bruner closes her piece by looking at the term as a sort of catch-all for a female bonding that can happen when you're closing out an important section of your life. 

In his take in New York, Silverman writes as if that might go away, or that it never really existed: 

Of course, the SWUGs aren’t actually washed up. Three months from now, they will be the bright-eyed newcomers in New York or Los Angeles, the 22-year-olds dancing on banquettes in nightclubs, who still drink too much and still flirt with boys. They’ll go from envying freshmen girls to being the envy of older women. That dayger at Sigma Nu is going to feel very far away.

Maybe I wasn't truly a SWUG, but I couldn't have had a different post-grad experience. 

Back at actual Yale, Bruner questioned whether she, as a feminist, should be embracing the term SWUG, even though, by some standards, the throwing-caution-to-the-wind attitude is exactly what modern feminism looks like: "Whatever empowerment we're supposed to be deriving from this version of the feminist moment is looking pretty thin on the ground." She wonders whether SWUG is a response to an older generation's focus—hello, Princeton Mom!—on getting married at the end of college: "Is SWUG-ness a response to that — a way to deal with biological insecurities and to rebel against society's traditional expectations of women? A fuck-'em-all, let's-do-what-matters-to-us kind of attitude that has nothing to do with the images of lackluster sex and desperate partying that it’s grown to encompass?" That's more of the SWUG I knew, and what happened to matter to my SWUGs was snuggling up with our Netflix accounts.

For me it's amusing that SWUG has moved beyond the joke phase into the trend story phrase, something that I thought I knew pretty intimately, repackaged by someone like Silverman for a broad audience, open for ridicule, and ultimately misinterpreted. You can blame Sunday Styles or New York or Sheryl Sandberg for the trend stories. Just don't blame my meatball sub.

       

Bloomberg's Candidate Wins Open House Seat But Don't Call Him a Kingmaker Quite Yet

Surprise surprise: Robin Kelly, the gun hating former Illinois state representative who's friends with Obama and enjoyed over $2 million of Mike Bloomberg's money for her campaign, has won the special election to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. It wasn't even close. According to the Associated Press who called the election not long after polls closed, Kelly pulled in an impressive 89 percent of the vote. Her opponent, Republican Paul McKinley, only managed 7 percent.

But really, it's not surprise. McKinley is actually an unemployed felon who served nearly 20 years in prison for armed robbery, burglary and aggravated battery. He was paroled in 1997 and was obviously considered a bit of long shot in this election. It didn't help that he managed to raise less than $20,000 for his campaign. Kelly raised close to $1 million, and that's not counting the $2.2 million that Independence USA, an anti-gun political action committee funded by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, spent buying ads to help Kelly win the Democratic primary against former congresswoman Deborah Halverson. Kelly ended up beating Halverson neatly, winning 52 percent of the vote to her opponents 24 percent.

Again, unsurprisingly, the election has been a contentious one thanks to all of the out-of-town money at play. Bloomberg evidently wanted to prop up Kelly as a model gun control advocate and send her to Washington where she could champion progressive legislation to that end. Kelly also won the support of former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. who's struggled with mental illness in recent years but, despite his recently pleading guilty to felony charges of misappropriating campaign funds, still holds powerful sway in the district he controlled for 17 years. All that aside, a lot of people had issues with Bloomberg's contribution to the election, especially Halverson who basically accused Bloomberg of "buying seats."

No one can know whether  Kelly could've beaten her Democratic primary opponent without her supporters' deep pockets, but it's not time to call Bloomberg a kingmaker. It can't be that hard to beat a felon who spent nearly two decades in jail — we're talking about McKinley here — and old fashioned things like endorsements from powerful people in the community like Jackson really do help. It also can't hurt that she's pals with the president. Plus, Bloomberg's otherwise coming up short on his kingmaking endeavors. 

       

Highlights from the Met's New Billion Dollar Donation

Leonard Lauder, the heir to cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder's massive fortune, just donated 78 Cubist paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That adds up to a lot of Picassos: 33 to be exact. The gift also includes 17 Braques, 14 Légers and 14 works by Gris. In total, the 80-year-old gave away $1.1 billion worth of art, a sum that amounts to one eight of Lauder's entire fortune. In the words of The New York Times, Lauder's profoundly generous donation is "one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art." The Met's received a lot of gifts, by the way.

What's truly extraordinary about Lauder's gift isn't the dollar value, it's the perceived importance in the history of art. The Met is not the MoMA, and it's not the Whitney. It's not known for modern art at all, in fact, but the works of art the Lauder tossed its way with no strings attached — that is, the curator can do what she pleases with the collection — puts the museum on par with the greatest in the world in terms of early 20th-century art. This vital era saw the birth of Cubism and, many would argue, all of modern art as we know it. Now, the Met holds close to a hundred of the most important works. Thanks Leonard!

Much of the collection's uniquely high quality is owned to Lauder's own discerning eye. Emily Braun, the billionaire's curator for 26 years, also deserves credit. "You can't put together a good collection unless you are focused, disciplined, tenacious and willing to pay more than you can possibly afford," Lauder told The Times. "Early on I decided this should be formed as a museum collection, [and] whenever I considered buying anything, I would step back and ask myself, does this make the cut?"

So what makes the cut? Have a look at this quick highlight reel. Be impressed, be intrigued, be confused. This is Cubism, after all.

Pablo Picasso - "The Fan (L'Independent)" (1911)

Picasso began experimenting with typography around this time. This is one of the first works from the period.

George Braque - "Fruit Dish and Glass" (1912)

Braque is famous, in part, for inventing the papier collé or paper collage method that involved using different types of paper to create different types of effects. In this work, it's wood grain. It's also the first time Braque tried out the technique.

Pablo Picasso - Head of a Woman (1909)

This is a big one. A depiction of Picasso's then-lover Fernande Olivier, "Head of a Woman" is considered the first Cubist sculpture.

George Braque - "Trees at L'Estaque" (1908)

A lot of Cubism is hard to comprehend. This one is just beautiful and marked Braque's emergence from obscurity when it was shown at the 1908 Kahnweiler exhibition.

       

Obama Fails to Croon to the Crowd at White House Memphis Soul Party

It's always fun to watch President Obama go to music-related events, most especially because there's usually a good chance that he might get on stage to sing. Tuesday night was one of those nights. The event's part of the In Performance at the White House series and is nothing but fun. The first family hosted a few music greats — everyone from Booker T. Jones to Cyndi Lauper —  and Queen Latifah was hosting and singing as well. Justin Timberlake was there, too, for some reason. According to Obama in his opening remarks, the former N'Sync star could offer "a few points" on getting married. (Feel old yet?)

No matter what happened, we couldn't wait to see Obama sing "Sweet Home Chicago" again. "Tonight, I am speaking not just as a President, but as one of America's best-known Al Green impersonators," Obama joked. So let's scratch that "Sweet Home Chicago" request. We wouldn't wait to hear Obama sing anything. But he didn't. Anyway, here's how it went down.

UPDATE (9:16 p.m. EST): Obama didn't sing a thing! Unlike last year's star-studded event that peaked with the president and Buddy Guy passed the microphone back in forth in a finale rendition of "Sweet Home Chicago," Obama stayed in his chair at the end of this year's show. He did sing along to Timberlake's version of "Sittin' by the Dock of the Bay," but the White House didn't even let the press pool stick around for the whole show either. Susan Crabtree from The Washington Times said she was "disappointed." 

Well, at last year's show is still cool? 

The full set list, which you can watch with your own eyes next Tuesday night on PBS:

 

1. Sam Moore and Joshua Ledet: “Soul Man” (written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter)

2. Mavis Staples: “I'll Take You There” (written by Alvertis Isbell)

3. Justin Timberlake and Steve Cropper: “(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay” (written by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper)

4. Eddie Floyd: “Knock on Wood” (written by Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper)

5. Alabama Shakes and Steve Cropper: “Born Under a Bad Sign” (written by Booker T. Jones and William Bell)

6. William Bell: “You Don't Miss Your Water” (written by William Bell)

7. Queen Latifah: “I Can't Stand the Rain” (written by Ann Peebles, Don Bryant, and Bernard "Bernie" Miller)

8. Sam Moore: “When Something is Wrong with My Baby” (written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter)

9. Joshua Ledet: “When A Man Loves a Woman” (written by Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright)

10. Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite: “I'm In I'm Out and I'm Gone” (written by Ben Harper and Jason Mozersky)

11. Cyndi Lauper and Charlie Musselwhite: “Try a Little Tenderness” (written by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry M. Woods)

12. All-Cast Finale: “In the Midnight Hour” (written by Steve Cropper and Wilson Pickett, Jr.)