Lady Gaga’s New Campaign to Make America Polite Again

Is Miss Manners rolling in her grave if she’s dead?

I’ve been increasingly worried about America’s manners. Ever since the old guard made fun of the disabled Washington Post reporter, Serge Kovaleski, America’s classiness has been furiously zooming downhill.

We were never an elegant country — not since I’ve been alive. But we were armed with political correctness which gave us the Pavlovian shock or peer disapproval when we were racist, sexist, ageist, ableist, or classist.

Even if we behaved badly behind closed doors, there was a baseline awareness that not everyone was the same and it wasn’t polite to make fun of people who were different than us. At least not publicly. But then, our Criminal and Chief behaved badly on the world stage and America was like “Well, if he’s doing it.”

Thank God for famous people. I felt helpless about how rude people had become. I couldn’t leave the house without someone getting angry at me in the Walgreens line, snickering at my mask, flipping me off in traffic.

Lady Gaga and other famous people have come to America’s rescue. They have banded together to sing a ballad to make America polite again. I get chills just thinking about their song.

This country doesn’t need to get its hands dirty helping other countries, Gaga said. We need to get our hands dirty helping ourselves. And what better way than filling the stage of the Kennedy Center with famous people singing one country-changing song about good manners?

Lady Gaga, Elton John, Bradley Cooper, Kristin Stewart, Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce, and that actress from Hunger Games have been rehearsing their new song about being polite night and day.

Elton John explained. We are working with that songwriting savant Bradley Cooper to sing this transforming ballad which will inspire America to be less tacky. I mean how much glitter can one country own? And where the fuck is my sparkling water?

I didn’t even want to be from here, Twilight’s Kristin Stewart said. I am so much more French, you know? I’m petite. I look incredible in black eyeliner. I mask my stench with expensive perfume. What was the question? Oh right. Are Americans too self-centered to make a song about politeness? Could you ask me that in French, s’il vois plait?

Beyonce chimed in. She looked great. When doesn’t she? Full glitter bodysuit. Yes and no, Beyonce said. We are self-absorbed, yes, but music transcends everything, even America’s uncouthness.

Jennifer Hudson opened her mouth in agreement and a thousand doves fluttered out. Once her throat was cleared out of the doves, Hudson began to sing the song, which caused Beyonce to fall into a dance routine that made my knees buckle. I really needed to call my chiropractor. Jesus, what are Beyonce’s joints made from? Bubblegum?

The be-polite ballad is about how we can be reborn as a county. We can exorcise the bad manners we learned from the previous administration, keep spinning around our heads, and projectile vomiting the 2016–2020 vitriol until we are clean again.

The famous people hope if we all sing along, it will function as an instruction manual on how to be kind, loving, and maybe one day, stop flipping each other off at school drop-off, the grocery store, and funerals.

At this point, Bradley said. I just want people to stop Karening and shooting each other. The cessation of the middle finger might not come for years. We have to be patient. The last administration Manchurian candidated us all into revering the adult temper tantrum. When I look into my ideal future I see patriotic Americans excusing themselves when they have to pass gas.

I just think everybody is full of shit, said the woman from the Hunger Games, whose name is Jennifer something. I don’t know why actors are expected to be the conscience of this country just because everybody knows our names.

Then, Lady Gaga gestured them all to stand as they sang their way off stage, waving their jazz hands.