Boomers who rant about ‘snowflakes’ should question their own perspective too
After the recent controversy that pitted student sensitivities at the University of Guelph against Lou Reed’s 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side,” I have one question: where was the Central Students Association when I was being forced to listen to Neil Sedaka’s “Bad Blood” 400 times a day back in 1975?
“Bad (ba-a-ad) blood (blo-o-od),’’ crooned the elfish pixie in Mom jeans. “The bitch is in her smile/ The lie is on her lips/ Such an evil child.”
I didn’t know what old Neil was singing about — he clearly had issues with women — but the song’s misogynistic chorus matched with his cherubic, smiling face was enough to send me into paroxysms of torment.
I had the same reaction to Paul Anka’s “(You’re) Having My Baby” — for which Ms. Magazine awarded him a “Male Chauvinistic Pig of the Year” citation — when it was foist upon me by AM radio during my final year in junior high.
“The need inside you/ I see it showin’/ Whoa, the seed inside ya /Baby, do you feel it growin’ /Are you happy you knowin’ /That you’re Havin’ my baby.”
Why was I being subjected to this torture? my 14-year-old self fretted at the time. Isn’t this something he should discuss with his
shrink?
All of which is a long-winded way of addressing today’s topic: the outrage over the inclusion of “Wild Side” on a university playlist and the corresponding outrage over “coddled Millennials” who can’t handle the truth.
On one hand, it blows my mind that someone attending a campus bus pass event heard Reed’s mumbly, talk-singing ode to transsexuals, prostitution and oral sex on an overhead sound system, determined its values might be out of sync with today’s social mores and became distraught enough to file a formal complaint.
It’s like a story from satirical website The Onion.
In another context, it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Today’s hyper-enlightened social climate, with low tolerance for dissenters, didn’t come about by accident.
It’s the result of more than 50 years of social evolution that started with things like civil rights, feminism and the concept of personal empowerment.
The fact it has evolved to the point where people are complaining that a 44-year-old pop song that celebrates New York’s trans community “devalues their experiences and identities” may seem shocking, but it’s the natural result of two things:
a new generation — derogatorily dismissed as “snowflakes” — who grew up believing they were special and could change the world.
the collective hive mind of social media, which has never met a spurious allegation it couldn’t turn into a full blown scandal.
In today’s sensitized pop culture, everything is sacred, breaches of etiquette not tolerated, and the only thing that matters, critics charge, is the personal comfort of those who feel offended.
Not surprisingly, it’s created the most massive generation gap since the original boomers shouted down their stuffed shirt parents at the dinner table and stomped off to drop acid at Woodstock.
And here’s the irony: it’s this same group of aging rebels — equally dogmatic in their day — who are most outraged that their kids/grandkids have turned into left-wing versions of the people they once considered “squares.”
“If older generations didn’t want us to build our own political ideas, they shouldn’t have stressed education or told us to ‘change the world,’” Megan Frisbie wrote in an odysseyonline essay entitled “Why Millennials Are So ‘Sensitive.”
“They shaped our lifestyle in a way where we are done with institutions that restrict our happiness ... We want to see diversity and an end to hatred, bigotry and xenophobia.”
Personally, I have no issue with Reed’s song about a transgender actress who hitchhikes across the U.S.A., “plucked her eyebrows on the way/ Shaved her legs and then he was a she.”
Does it stereotype transgender people as “wild” or “unusual”?
Maybe, but I happily accept the testimony of Reed’s friends and colleagues who insist he was an active supporter, and occasional participant, in what was then a burgeoning subculture.
It does, however, beg the question: what if the University of Guelph student association had played The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” instead?
“Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields/ Sold in the market down in New Orleans/ Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ all right/ Hear him whip the women just around midnight.”
I won’t get into the chorus, which involves miscegenation, oral sex, sado-masochism, lost virginity, heroin and some pretty offensive generalizations about African American women.
In 1971 it was a No. 1 hit on Billboard as scores of teenagers boogied to this buoyant celebration of the joys of slave rape. Yahoo.
And what about Nick Gilder’s 1978 charttopper, “Hot Child in the City,” sang from the perspective of, ahem, a child rapist.
“Come on down to my place baby, we’ll talk about love,” he croons to the 12-year-old hooker of his dreams. “Come on down to my place baby, we’ll make love.”
I was a teenager when these songs were hits, and I can tell you without doubt that no one among my peers, male or female, gave a second thought to the lyrics.
They were just songs on the radio. If they had a decent hook and catchy chorus, we were in.
The idea of exploitation rarely, if ever reared its head.
Even when The Rolling Stones promoted their 1976 album “Black and Blue” with a billboard image of a bound, bruised, barely dressed supermodel exclaiming, “I’m ‘Black and Blue’ from the Rolling Stones — and I love it!” it barely raised an eyebrow. But that was then. As a father of two young boys, I can’t defend the lyrical content of “Brown Sugar” any more than The Buoys ode to cannibalism (“Timothy”), The Police’s ode to stalking (“Every Breath You Take) or Britney Spears’ ode to getting punched in the face (“... Baby One More Time”).
Nor can I stick my neck out for The Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” (too misogynistic), Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby” (too orgasmic), Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-A-Ling” (too obnoxious), Randy Newman’s “Short People” (too height-centric), The Knack’s “My Sharona” (too leering), The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” (too suicidal) and the entire genre of gangsta rap (too everything).
The best I could do would be to contextualize them: “This is how the people who controlled pop culture thought in the days before diversity, inclusion and accountability.”
And, to be honest, even some of them are having second thoughts.
I talked to Trooper’s lead singer Ra McGuire about the band’s 1979 hit “3 Dressed Up as a9” — which includes the lyric “you looked a whole lot better to me/ From 20 feet away” — and he hemmed and hawed before admitting he felt ashamed that his younger, less enlightened self had penned this crassly anti-female anthem.
Ditto for Gordon Lightfoot, who excised his first big hit, “For Lovin’ Me,” from his concert playlist because, in the ensuing 50 years, he has come to understand that lines like “I got a hundred more like you/ So don’t be blue/ I’ll have a thousand ‘fore I’m through” did not address his own role in the dissolution of his marriage.
Even Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone he would never write a song like “Brown Sugar” today.
“I would probably censor myself,” he explained sheepishly in 1995. “I’d think, ‘Oh God, I can’t. I’ve got to stop. I can’t just write raw like that.”
Appropriate comments from a grandfather of five (and great-grandfather of one), who has evolved more than the ticked off boomers who rant about the rigid attitudes of “self-entitled snowflakes” without questioning their own perspective.
It would do them well to reconsider, before the culture wars of the 1960s come back to bite them on the butt.
Snowflakes may be delicate and unique, but when enough of them pour down together, it creates one hell of a resistance.