Catholic leaders upset over Nicki Minaj performance specifically intended to upset Catholic leaders
Nicki Minaj’s Grammys performance—which seemed calculated to an absurd degree to offend self-important Catholic leaders who have a tendency to issue hyperbolic condemnations of trendy pop culture, thus engendering free press in the form of a contrived “controversy”—has succeeded in offending the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, whose frequent grandstanding, irksome delivery, and sheer prolificacy basically makes him the Nicki Minaj of Catholicism. Not surprisingly, Donohue had several problems with the performance that was created explicitly so that people like Bill Donohue would have problems with it.
Under a statement titled, “Is Nicki Minaj Possessed?” Donohue lists everything Minaj was pretty sure would upset someone like him when she came up with it, i.e. showing up to the red carpet with a fake Pope, appropriating a confessional booth, stained-glass windows, and other religious iconography, and of course, “the sexual statement that showed a scantily clad female dancer stretching backwards while an altar boy knelt between her legs in prayer,” thereby inviting you to make jokes about how the Catholic church would never allow an altar boy to be sexualized. In short, everything is considered but the music itself, which was coincidentally also Minaj’s approach to the performance and, some would argue, most of her output. Donohue then concludes by saying, “Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question,” which will make for an excellent wink-wink query on Nicki Minaj’s next round of interviews—thanks, Bill Donohue. You've now played your part—as have we by reporting it—and the gears turn ever onward.