Where are the death panels when you need them?

[muckefuck]

I wanted to post a music video to FB for Father's Day, but I couldn't settle on a good choice until I saw what my friend Opera Joe did. Instead of posting songs about fathers, he found some that his father used to sing. Great idea, but the songs I learned from my dad were more campfire songs, and not the sort of things that tend to have videos made to them posted to YouTube. So I tried to think instead in terms of commercial artists who my father introduced me to, and the first name that popped into my head was Ray Stevens. Actually, it was there already because the Onion recently mentioned a Barry Manilow parody of his of which I was previously unaware and I'd been meaning to listen to it. So I did. YouTube, as is its way, suggested other titles from him and clicked on one of them.

And I wish I hadn't. Turns out, at age 72, he's still writing and performing...and I'd rather he wasn't. His "satirical" take on illegal immigration is a recapitulation of all the senseless lies I'm sick of hearing from nativists who think no one else in the world deserves the chance they got. He actually ends it with a dedication to the "hard-working" people who "came to the USA the right way--by being born here!" Yeah, don't think that one through too hard, Ray. And that's nothing compared to his followup, a sickening paean to Arizona which actually begins with a spoken-word evocation of the eponymous battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor and segues into kudos for Jan Brewer and Joe "DWB" Arpaio.

In short, as I told monshu, "He's exactly the kind of reactionary fossil who needs to die off so that I can finally live in the country I want to see." Someone who came of age during the Whitest period in US history (in Cobb County, no less!) and can't adapt to a world where he and his kind no longer unquestionably hold all the cards. It sours everything I ever enjoyed from him--from "Ahab the Arab" to "The 43rd Annual Convention of the Grand Mystic Royal Order of the Nobles of the Ali Baba Temple of the Shrine". And it goes without saying that it killed off my enthusiasm for finding a song to post.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying, and I have my share of people I don't want to hear from since they can't change their minds and won't change the subject. (And feel compelled to insert it into otherwise unrelated material-- there are some singers and other entertainers I pretty much had to give up attending performances of during the last administration.)

On the other hand, it's a shame if that taints earlier, nonpolitical work that you like. I know I'd lose a lot of my favorites if I had to trim them based on annoying or odious political opinions.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll get over it, and it's just the surprise and disappointment of discovery that has me so down on him right now. But I certainly don't feel like leading others to his (earlier) work any more; it would feel like encouraging them to patronise Chick-Fil-A.

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

Given his early work and I won't name them here given your decision, its especially sad that he's taken this turn.

lhn: How are you coping with David Mamet's turn of late. I have to perform a similar detach art from artist thing to an extent, but when I am back to buying theater tickets I won't be in a rush to patronize his shows.

Its funny, just this afternoon I faced this chunk of decision making. Wxrt was playing John Mayer, and while prior to his dumb ass racist remarks about african american women, I found him inoffensive and not compelling, now I cringed at the sound of his voice and I hit mute.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I read this entire post thinking you meant Cat Stevens and was so confused.

[clintswan.livejournal.com]

ugh

death indeed

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I say we team up and take him out!

[sandor-baci.livejournal.com]

The curate's egg.

So much contentment depends on looking away.