This column is being republished with permission from its original home on Substack. For more from Michael Ian Black, subscribe here.
Mea culpa, mea culpa. I’ve previously expressed my reservations about Trump’s big beautiful ballroom, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting changed my mind.
As the president himself, and thousands of his supporters echoed, this terrible event would not have happened if only there’d been a giant ballroom. They’re right.
The solution to the nation’s epidemic of gun violence has been staring us in the face this whole time: we need more ballrooms.
Yes, ballrooms. In every school, every house of worship, every movie theater. Ballrooms in malls. Ballrooms in Waffle Houses and 7-11s. Every new home should come with a Panic Ballroom, and all older homes should be retrofitted to include them.
Make America Ballroom Again.
Those who advocate for greater restrictions on guns have failed to slow the rate of gun violence in this nation. The headlines over the past week—8 dead children in a mass shooting in Louisiana, 6 shot in Michigan—have made that abundantly clear. So why not try this new, bold solution? As our great president so often asked when campaigning for the job he now holds, “What have you got to lose?”
What would a nation of ballrooms even look like? I’ll tell you: like a nation of people who do the foxtrot. The benefits would be extraordinary. Not only would Americans be immunized from gun violence, but consider what such a project would do to their waistlines! You want to slim Americans down? Teach them the mambo, the tango, and the Viennese Waltz.
Plus, consider the economic boom that will result from the purchases of all of those ballgowns and corsages. Tuxedo sales will skyrocket! Cummerbunds will replace saggy jeans as the style trend of choice. Americans will look better, dress better, and most important of all, dance better.
MAHA, indeed!
A wise man looks at a crisis and sees an opportunity. If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Trump is a wise man. Last night, our president could have repeated the same age-old platitudes about “thoughts and prayers.” He didn’t do that. Still in his tuxedo from the night’s gathering, he stood at the podium of the White House Press Briefing Room and made an impassioned case for the power of dance to heal this country’s wounds.
“For too many years, this nation has known the terror of gun violence,” he began. “That scourge ends now. Tonight, I call on America’s business leaders and choreographers to join hands. Let us come together on the nation’s dance floors like John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in Saturday Night Fever. Let the White House ballroom inspire us to beat our swords into tap shoes. Dance, my fellow Americans, dance!”
And lo, America danced.
No doubt there will be those who say we cannot defeat the influence of the gun lobby with the influence of Twyla Tharp and Alvin Ailey, but those nattering nabobs of negativity have never known the joy of a well-executed pas de deux.
Yes, pas de deux is a ballet term, but ballet forms the basis of all dance and I just think a commitment to constructing millions of domestically-sourced ballrooms would inspire a concomitant growth in ballet schools.
I also anticipate objections from the nation’s critical supply of dudebros who may object to dance as a solution to gun violence. “Too beta,” our alphas may say. “Not enough mogging.” To those worried that all this dancing will lead, inevitably, to the further feminization of America, I offer two words:
Patrick F--ing Swayze.
Nobody puts America in a corner. Nobody.
How terrible that we had to endure yet another episode of gun violence to reach this point, but we’re here now and I say, “Thank God.” And “how about the ‘Cha Cha Slide’”?
But more than God, thank President Trump. Maybe those people upset with Trump for portraying himself as Jesus Christ last week should have a good, long look in the mirror because not even Jesus Christ himself would look at the mass murders occurring among his favorite American children and think, Ballroom.
God bless President Trump. God bless ballrooms. God bless us, everyone. At this point, we need all the blessings we can get.
Put on your best dance shoes and join Michael Ian Black on the floor. And for more commentary and fancy footwork, click through to Substack.
