I know, I know… What does that headline even mean???
This is a delightful, heartwarming story.
It’s a story about Korean pop music bands, and overzealous fans, and “woke” grandmothers, and social media-active teenagers, and how they all came together to make life difficult for Donald Trump, and his followers.
America first became exposed to the phenomenon of “K-pop” in 2017, when the South Korean boy band BTS brought their sunny dispositions, nice outfits, and exquisite dance moves over here, and took the country by storm.
They spent the next couple years touring America, appearing at the Grammys, and taking over Saturday Night Live on April 13, 2019 (hosted by smitten fan Emma Stone).
It didn’t take long for them to develop a solid corps of adoring fans in the US, following suit of their true believers in South Korea and Japan.
It wasn’t just their adorable looks and sharp dance moves – their positive-outlook lyrics (on albums like Love Yourself) and their social awareness endeared them to multi-layered generations of fans.
Other K-pop bands followed: Luna, EXO, Seventeen, and Girls’ Generation.
The devotion ran deep enough – for all these K-pop bands – that the fans were happily termed “stans”, in homage to the 2000 Eminem song about a crazed – psychotic, even – fan named Stan.
“Stan” became a term – eventually of endearment – for supercharged fans of any celebrity.
It’s now a verb. As in, “I’ll happily admit to fully stanning Miley Cyrus.”
One of the things these crazed fans did was video their heroes onstage, and post their “fancams” on YouTube. Incessantly.
And boy did that turn out to help later.
* * *
The first I caught wind of the K-pop social media antics was May 31, when the Dallas Police Department posted a request for video of “illegal activity” by Black Lives Matter protesters.
They received plenty of videos. Just not the ones they were looking for.
Angered by the DPD’s attempt to identity protesters (and subject them to who-knows-what) the K-pop stans pumped the system full of fancams.
The app broke down.
A few days later, I started noticing that the K-pop fancams were disrupting another favorite pastime of Trump’s supporters.
Whenever someone would start a #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag, the K-poppers would take over the hashtag, flooding it with a sea of fancams.
On June 6, BTS announced that they were donating $1 million to Black Lives Matter organization.
Within hours, their army of stans matched it with another million.
Turns out, that was just a warmup for their big act.
* * *
A couple weeks ago, Donald Trump was in a foul mood.
His halting, awkward walk down the ramp at West Point (after his graduation speech to the cadets) and his odd two-fisted attempt to lift a glass of water to his mouth, had made him the laughing stock of the media, and the object of a hilarious Lincoln Project ad. (It also spurred the #TrumpisUnwell hashtag.)
His organizers knew he needed something to lift his spirits.
He’d been stuck inside the White House for weeks.
His poll number were declining steadily.
The Coronavirus numbers, on the other hand, were going straight up – particularly in his “breadbasket” red states.
“I know what’ll work,” campaign manager Brad Parscale snapped his fingers. “A good, old-fashioned rally.”
They could hold it in Oklahoma – they love him there!
They scheduled it for June 19th – Juneteenth, the day celebrating the emancipation of the enslaved African-American people.
They booked the BOK Center, in Tulsa. That was the city that had been the home of “Black Wall Street,” the wealthiest, most thriving community in the country in the early 1920s.
That was before it was wiped out in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”
Never mind that Oklahoma was becoming one of the Coronavirus hotspots.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for one thing, the date they chose.
Given how much Trump had pushed back against the Black Lives Matters movement, and how disrespectfully he’d treated protestors, it didn’t seem right.
He gave in to the backlash (after taking credit for “making Juneteenth famous”).
He moved the rally to Saturday, June 20th.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign was getting very excited.
Team Trump posted a “WE’REEEE BACKKKKK!” registration page on Twitter.
Nearly one million people had registered for the Tulsa rally.
How were they gonna fit all those people inside???
So they built an outdoor secondary stage, so Trump and Mike Pence could address the adoring overflow throng.
They hadn’t noticed one thing, though.
In Fort Dodge, Iowa, a 51-year-old grandmother named Mary Jo Laupp had come up with an idea.
She’d volunteered for Pete Buttigieg, and she’d learned to use TikTok, where she posted a video.
It was a simple video, with some suggestions:
“I want you to Google two phrases,” she said. “Google ‘Juneteenth’ and ‘Black Wall Street’. You’ll find out why people are upset about this. It’s a slap in the face to the black community.”
Then, she said, register for tickets for the event. And don’t go. “Leave him standing there alone on the stage.”
And that is when the K-pop stans jumped in.
Along with plenty of other teenagers on TikTok, they registered for the bulk of the million tickets, buoying the expectations of the Trump campaign.
And they stayed home.
When the day of the great event came, Trump’s campaign started to notice something strange:
Nobody was there.
The 19,000 seat BOK Center was just one-third full. The Tulsa Fire Dept. reported an attendance of 6,200.
That outdoor stage, where Trump and Pence planned to address the overflow crowd?
They took it down before the show began.
As several Twitter users noted, “This was the best Senior prank ever!”
According to reports, Trump fumed backstage, as he watched the meager crowd assemble.
He pulled it together to pull off a few jokes about walking down the ramp, or about the “Kung Flu Virus.”
(I wish I was making this up. I’m not.)
Then he turned around, got back on the plane, and flew back to the White House.
When he emerged from the plane at 1am in Washington, his tie was off.
His shirt was unbuttoned, his orange make-up staining the open collar.
Later, campaign manager Brad Parscale blamed the poor turnout on a few things:
It was the liberal media, scaring the supporters away with threats of the Coronavirus.
It was the protesters.
Me, I think I know who’s responsible, for the most part.
And I might just go buy some BTS albums.
Daddy Gibs 
Its completely delicious isn’t it!! Sent from Sue’s phone
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