{"id":581,"date":"2010-08-17T17:52:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T21:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=581"},"modified":"2010-08-17T17:52:08","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T21:52:08","slug":"the-senator-and-the-bad-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=581","title":{"rendered":"The Senator and the Bad Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Close your eyes. Imagine you are at a Lady Gaga concert. What do you see? A smoke-filled stage and a flaming angel statue? Check. A gang of muscular, nearly nude, male back-up dancers wearing what can only be called minimalist lederhosen? Yup. Gaga herself decked out in lingerie that looks like it was fashioned out of fishnet and a freshly-killed raven? Of course. Hordes of young fans screaming to the lyrics to songs about getting black-drunk in a cab, Mexican ex-lovers, and stalking celebrities? Definitely. New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, the oldest member of the Senate, celebrating his 86th birthday with his wife, Bonnie? You bet.<\/p>\n

That’s right. While every other 86 year-old was spending his birthday at home,\u00a0opening box-set after box-set of Ken Burns documentaries, and gumming down sugar-free birthday cake, Sen. Lautenberg was at Radio City Music Hall <\/a>tearing it up with the First Lady of glam-rock-electro-pop-dance. When asked why he chose to attend the concert in the first place, the Senator, like most Gaga-goers, said he was looking for a bit of escape from the daily grind:<\/p>\n

“Last week in Washington was like a bad romance. I wanted my birthday to be a little more fun.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Lady Gaga concert: More fun than sitting through an Appropriations Committee hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Close your eyes. Imagine you are at a Lady Gaga concert. What do you see? A smoke-filled stage and a flaming angel statue? Check. A gang of muscular, nearly nude, male back-up dancers wearing what can only be called minimalist lederhosen? Yup. Gaga herself decked out in lingerie that looks like it was fashioned out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}