This article imports The Romanian Reality TV Show whole into its namespace. Thus prepare accordingly.
The reader may or (most likely) may not be familiar with the recent scandal in the cesspool formerly known as "the Romanian public space": some kid had a live performance, or at least I hope it was live, with utterings of things such as cunts and Gypsies, in any case, whatever passes nowadays as an "artistic act". Assuming it is to be treated as such, for otherwise it would be nothing in particular, it's amusing to watch the propaganda machinery making a confusion of artistic acts and decency -- as if art was ever "decent" among all things it could've been -- and on the other hand it's amusing to watch the "artists" themselves unaware of all the history behind this cultural war, portraying themselves as victims, as if the victims of a war could get anything but shattered body parts and a general atmosphere of death.
I don't know too much, nor do I care to know about the Gheboasă kid. Who knows, maybe he'll get big someday, maybe on his own power too and not by merely catering to the fashions of the day. At the moment he's largely unknown because he's very common, that is, he's part of a record label that thrives on finding the optimal recipe for getting more ears on YouTube or whatever. And good for them, they're running a business and they're playing the game, regardless of how fucked up it may be. Still, Gheboasă is not a name right now, he's merely part of some genre or another, which makes him somewhat of an uncanny target.
You may or may not be aware of the fact that the Romanian government is some -- not that well known by someone as myself -- distance away from bankruptcy, or at the very least from more debt. The puppet-in-chief, some "democrat-socialist" Cholak dude, is trying to bring in more money to the budget, by grabbing it from the local businesses, especially from the smaller ones. This ain't new either, as the new fiscal laws at the beginning of this year have shown us... well, now they're doing the new new fiscal laws! just like in Caragea's time!
Now, just as you see some derp or another whine about how their good state is going to fuck 'em in the ass again, only harder this time around, and just as the second guy pops his head out of the crowd to talk... what do you think could happen? Well, the machine pops in for a course correction, what else the fuck could it do? If you're demoralized by the future ahead, propaganda will simply give you something to demoralize you even more -- via the usual mechanism of "consensus", filled with bureaucrats arguing with nobodies on the TV and so on and so forth, I hope you're following.
Romania is slowly transitioning into the next electoral cycle and as it does, the usual suspects have it completely covered -- in fact they had it covered as early as 2000 when Vadim lost the presidentials the way he did. Anyway, as it does, the so-called social-democrats are trying to steer more electorate their way, by stealing it from the self-proclaimed nationalists, by positioning themselves as conservatives. This'll lead to all sorts of replays such as this one, which is merely this, a replay.
You may or may not remember, but at some point the local consensusers attempted to censor the local band Paraziții; and yet earlier they tried to censor BUG Mafia. And even those episodes were replays! If you're older, you may remember that pantsuit-sponsored PMRC thing and how it went to war with Frank Zappa and Dee Snider of all people. Now I don't know that much about Snider, but would you call Zappa anything else but a fully-accomplished artist? and what about Prince, Ozzy or even fucking Madonna? Do you think they really bothered about the nonsense coming out of Tipper Gore's mouth? And really, what do you think the good ol' folks of "civil society" thought about The Beatles and Elvis when they first went on stage?
There's a Romanian phrase meaning "to fall for something", but sounding along the lines of "a pune botul" -- literally, to swallow some shit or another. The shitshow ends just as soon as tomorrow's kids stop doing precisely that. And by the looks of it, that moment is nowhere in sight.