Watching Curtis Sliwa watch comedian Spike Einbinder — brother of Hacks star Hannah Einbinder and son of Saturday Night Live alum Laraine Newman — get shot in a comic reenactment of the former New York City Republican mayoral candidate’s notorious 1992 kidnapping and shooting was the sort of spectacle I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Fortunately, the rest of the performance was every bit as absurd, and at times downright unhinged, which suited The Most American Pageant Ever!, an event promoted as a “renewed portrait of America” that often felt more like a lament in the nation’s semiquincentennial year.
Even if you’re among those who insist the United States is the “greatest country in the world,” like both the Donald Trump impersonator — who appeared to be everywhere in the show and staged the President’s infamous Butler assassination attempt not once but twice — and the real one, who keeps repeating the line as though it were self-evident, the crassly exhilarating celebration in front of a giant wiener cannon seemed exactly right for a moment of deep sorrow? repose? regret? However you describe it, the feeling is intense, because this is America and we do everything in extremes, even when we are gloriously shallow.
The Most American Pageant Ever! was organized by artists Jen Catron, Paul Outlaw, and Abby Lloyd (playing Trump), all of whom are masters of a glittering stars-and-stripes version of quintessential Americana, and their event at capitalism’s commercial center played out with the unruly spontaneity of reality television. The contestants included a drag queen as Melania, a voguer named Relish, an alien, a primordial clay woman, a patriotic singer named Kenneth Youngblood, a hyper-capitalist entrepreneur, and a UPS delivery person who dropped off the top secret files from Mar-a-Lago before joining the contest and getting into the talent competition.
The atmosphere was jubilant, the music blared, the camp reached maximum volume, and even the groan-inducing pauses had a way of lifting you into the thought that maybe the best thing about this country is that we have no shame, at least not when money, fame, or apparently art is on the line. There was no land acknowledgment, an omission made even more conspicuous by the crowds of tourists collecting a wild New York story to tell once they got home. The winner was meant to be announced first by Trump, who wanted to crown himself, and then by Outlaw, who took the microphone and presented the golden crown and flag cape to Spike Einbinder, which felt picture-perfect.
Einbinder was then invited to press a comically oversized button that was supposed to release the unredacted Epstein files, and did so as a cannon blast erupted from the giant hot dog, which I assume was meant to mimic a cum shot, albeit a somewhat underwhelming one and far below our expectations of porn. In her opening remarks, Catron explained why the giant hot dog parked in Times Square felt necessary, pointing to the 2024 performance with the massive prop, Hot Dog in the City; this version was called The Second Serving because, in her view, the gluttony of this nation means we are always coming back for more and more. She said they were drawn to the hot dog as a symbol of spectacle, celebration, contradiction, and excess, calling it “a surprisingly loaded object” that speaks to class, capitalism, how it is made and consumed, and “the enduring myth of the American dream.”
Catron said the idol-sized sculpture reflects a nation “built on enormous optimism and enormous contradictions,” and noted that the last two years “have felt … more chaotic, more polarized, more surreal, and somehow always a little louder.” She acknowledged that their taste is over-the-top, but added that “reality had outpaced the [art]work.” It’s hard to disagree. Maybe the best way to celebrate the United States is to laugh at ourselves, because we have become the clowns of the planet while still dominating it through wealth and power, both hard and soft.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Great American State Fair in Washington, DC, and it was as depressing as one might expect, something more suited to a regional college or small county fair than a global superpower. At the Catron and Outlaw event, I encountered something I didn’t find in DC that day: a self-awareness about what we are up against. Sliwa summed it up best when he saw the restaging of his own assassination attempt on stage: “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.” In that sense, the artists flatter the American Republic in a way it may not deserve, but one that feels necessary nonetheless.
In Giovanni’s Room (1956), James Baldwin wrote, “Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced.” Something has certainly gone missing in the United States of America. The real question is whether what was lost can ever be recovered, or whether this country is forever chasing after the money shot and leaving the missing to fend for themselves.
The Most American Pageant Ever! was hosted by artists Jen Catron, Paul Outlaw, and Abby Lloyd and included a panel of judges featuring Curtis Sliwa, Waris Ahluwalia, Lily Marotta, and Jean Cooney, with performances by Spike Einbinder, Ellery Neon, Kenneth Youngblood, Kiki Ball-Change, Celine Abdallah, Relish the Entertainer, Peter BD, Jordan Coley, and Claywoman. Presented by Times Square Arts, the event took place on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at 7pm EDT.
