My latest in PJ Media:
Investigative journalist Andy Ngo several days ago identified an Antifa member who has been sought by the Portland, Oregon, police since last August in a criminal investigation. The Portland police didn’t say what the investigation was about, but there are videos of this person appearing to commit assault and unmistakably engaging in indecent exposure (he bared his behind to show his somewhat less than magnificent contempt for the cops). That’s typical Antifa behavior, but decidedly untypical is what this fellow was up to before he got woke. “This is,” says Ngo, “Cary Cary Cary Canary (yes, that’s the new legal name), a former bluegrass singer who became a trans antifa militant in Portland. Canary (b. 1981), was formerly known as David Anthony Chaltraw and released music as ‘Davy Jay Sparrow.’”
“Davy Jay Sparrow” was actually not a bluegrass artist, but a singer and songwriter of Western swing, a cheerful, upbeat, danceable musical style that was popular decades ago and survives today only among musical historians, country music purists, and a small number of hipsters who like playing dress-up.
David Anthony Chaltraw was one of those purists, at least in part: A 2012 review of one of his albums (he released three) says that he was “not a neo-traditionalist, he’s an ultra-traditionalist. If you don’t like the ‘Olde Fashioned’ country sounds, then turn back now.” A review of his next album in 2013 cautioned that it was “not for everyone of course, you have to be an old soul with that old-school flavor for life to appreciate what Davy Jay is throwing your way. But man, what a fun time All Nite Long! is.”
Chaltraw seems for a time to have been one of those old souls himself; he threw himself totally into his Davy Jay Sparrow persona. When he got married in 2011, the wedding was a Western swing extravaganza, with the groom decked out in elaborately embroidered cowboy duds, just like the ones he wore on stage (in fact, he seems to have gotten married in one of his stage outfits).
However, his bride (who wore a more or less traditional wedding dress, albeit one that left her shoulders bare, showing off the tattoos on her left shoulder and right arm) gave a small hint that they were really just hipsters playing dress-up when she explained that the couple’s love for old-fashioned things did not extend to that old-time religion: “Having lives that in large part revolve around old-fashioned things in general, and old-fashioned honky-tonk in particular, it made sense for our wedding to be, well, old-fashioned! Sort of. It wasn’t old-fashioned in the sense that it was held in a church or that any rice was thrown at us, but rather it was old-fashioned in terms of entertainment and decor.”
There is much more. Read the rest here.