Look, I have deep empathy for Jackie's sister. Do I have empathy for Jackie herself and her horrible stage mother and unethical trainer? No, I do not. Jackie has always been heavily supported by evangelicals, and she is absolutely playing to her base by performing for the Orange. Jackie's sister, because Jackie is desperately trying to sell her most recent album (all "child" classical singers start to struggle when they hit their teen years and then in adulthood they disappear as the early stuff rarely translates to a serious classical career), is being placed in the midst of a horrible mess.
Jackie is more concerned about her evangelical base, album sales, and doing her little (pre-recorded) performance of the national anthem, without question linking herself and her image to Trump and everything for which he stands, than what her sister is experiencing or what Jackie's validation of Trump/Pence might mean for her sister's basic civil rights. I don't care about what is in Jackie's "heart" or whatever nonsense she SAYS -- what she is doing is APPALLING. SORRY.
Also, the Jackie worship, which mainly comes from evangelicals who are convinced that she is an "Angel" because of her blond looks (and yes they worship her blond looks) and adequate voice (obviously most of them know almost zero about classical voice), is nauseating. Jackie does not have an amazing voice by any serious classical standards (not even opera -- forget it -- serious opera singers don't even start training until the voice has reach maturity as singing "opera" before the voice is mature is a very, very bad idea). She has many basic technique problems that serious trained classical singers spend years correcting and avoiding. She "swallows" her voice, placing it far back in the throat, in an attempt to sound more mature and increase volume. This is very poor technique, and it damages the voice; this also causes singers to sing flat, and Jackie is frequently very flat. We can't listen to her perform live as her serious problems with pitch, including interval relationship, are just poor. Of course pitch problems are (mostly) "fixed" by engineers producing her albums.
She is one of a number of children over the years (many of her "fans" don't even know she is a teenager now) that are farmed out by stage parents and unethical vocal "trainers." The great violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman has made his feelings about the unethical promotion of children as "prodigies" (in classical vocal music or instrumental music) very clear -- he thinks it is horrible for the word of music and horrible for the children themselves. He knows as he lived through it himself, and he has seen many others experience this treatment.
Aside from her vocal issues, Jackie is making a decision that is a slap across her sister's face in favor of self-promotion and money money money. Sorry, but that is the truth.
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