Paul McCartney in Red Square

Don't know why, but I was just watching the Paul McCartney concert in
Red Square on A&E, and by the time the band closed with a rousing
rendition of "Hey Jude", I was on the verge of tears. The thing is, I
never really liked Paul McCartney--I always thought he played the
annoyingly jubilant elementary school music teacher to Lennon's angry
NYC hipster--nor do I entertain such fanciful notions of Russia now
being a free nation enjoying the fruits of Democracy. Certainly,
Premier Putin was in attendance, but the little fascist turd didn't
sing along to a single line, while his countrymen all around belted out
every complicated English turn of phrase. No, Russia is as deeply
fucked as ever, and one might guess that the masses gathered in Red
Square didn't adequately reflect the True People of Russia, much the
way the jackass males attending the SuperBowl year after year don't
represent the true America. We might suspect that those watching
McCartney were the winners in the new Russia: the oligarchs,
capitalists, and Western expatriates who could afford the tickets in
the first place.

Yet in spite of all of this, tears came to my eyes during the last song
as the cameras panned the massive audience, all of them singing along
to "Hey Jude"'s idiotically simple "nah nah nah" chorus. I guess it was
the diverse range of age, the gender balance, the hopeful looks in
their eyes, and a feeling of solidarity with people all around the
world excited to see their very favorite band live for the first time
in concert. There's something alive, electric, and dizzyingly
destabilizing about such an experience, ridden high by the fear that
one might be swept away in a wave of mass emotion and never come back.
Hitler did it for darker purposes, while McCartney, the head-bobbling
moron, has his wee gooey heart in the right place at least.

But still, Putin's silent appearance was a tad ominous. Dissenters are
starting to disappear in Russia at an alarming, Cold War-esque rate,
the Mad Midget might have been mindful of this fact: let the tune-rubes
and the pop-dullards and song-suckers have their brief breathe of fresh
air (as Putin himself dubbed the Beatles), before the Iron Walls come
crashing down again. McCartney's voice: the voice of capitalism, the
voice of consumerism, the voice of self-determination, the voice of
cheesy sentimentality... and completely incoherent to the President of
Russia.