Arianna Grande performed in a skirt that surely set church-lady tongues a-wagging. Her cover of Franklin's "Natural Woman" was restrained and soulful-- setting the tone for the hours-long ceremony. Unfortunately, the preacher groped her before she left the stage-- getting copious side-boob while cracking a questionable joke about Taco Bell and her Hispanic-sounding last name.
Al Sharpton threw some shade to the White House, saying: "You know the other Sunday on my show, I misspelled ‘respect,’ and a lot of y’all corrected me. Now I need you all to help me correct Mr. Trump and teach him what it means. And I say that because when word went out that Miss Franklin passed, Trump said 'She used to work for me'. No she used to perform for you-- she worked for us. Aretha never took orders from nobody but God!"
Bill Clinton memorably noted: "She lived with courage-- not without fear, but overcoming her fears. She lived with faith-- not without failure, but overcoming her failures. She lived with power, not without weakness but overcoming her weaknesses."
Chaka Khan absolutely rocked the joint with her rendition of Walter Hawkins' "Going Up Yonder".
Fantasia Barrino pulled out all the stops, wearing the longest eyelashes in the auditorium, kicking off her heels and frantically waving a black handkerchief during her rendition of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand".Greg Mathis, the retired Michigan district court judge turned daytime television star gave one of the most memorable eulogies of the day, saying that his last conversation with Ms. Franklin had been on the subject of the water crisis in Flint. When he told her that he would continue to fight for the people of Flint, she said, ‘Yeah Greg. You go back up there, and you sock it to ‘em!’”
“So in honor of my sister," Mathis vowed, "I’m going to Flint and I’m going to sock it to ’em!"
And to top it all off, the pervy preacher finished off the proceedings with an overly-political sermon that had little to do with Aretha herself. I'm quite sure there will be lots of talk-back about that one.
