Family Values

Don't let your children be exposed to the evils of homosexuality, liberalism, and free thought! Read the music reviews here before buying them a new album!

Seriously, while the conservative, homophobic, pro-marriage, anti-free-thought bias is obvious in these reviews, what I object to almost as much is that they apparently think kids are so stupid and impressionable as to take anything they hear in a song literally and seriously. Okay, so a lot of kids probably ARE that stupid, but still. Here's an excerpt from a review of Cracker's Forever:

A nonsensical song finds a man interested in a pot-smoking mermaid ("Brides of Neptune"). Closer to reality are references to marijuana and Tanqueray on "Strange." On that track, a guy visits a bar frequented by a gregarious homosexual known as "big, tall, gay Joey."

So what? Hearing these songs is going to make you smoke pot and become gay? I'm a Cracker fan, and I've never done either. I've also never become a serial hammer murderer, despite liking the Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," another song that these people object to. In their review of Dido's No Angel, they say, "The artist (who is single) fails to provide marital context on the morally ambiguous 'My Lover’s Gone,' 'Hunter' and 'All You Want.'" Um, what context do they have for even thinking these songs are supposed to be any more than fiction? (I don't know whether Dido's songs are autobiographical or not, but the reviewer's pointing out that she's single suggests that he assumes they are, apparently with no basis for doing so.) The A*Teens apparently covered Alice Cooper's "School's Out" (a ridiculous enough concept in and of itself), and the review says, "While it’s natural for kids to welcome summer vacation, a remake of Alice Cooper’s 'School’s Out' goes so far as to say, 'We might not come back at all . . . School’s out completely.'" Even if you agree with these people's postions (which I obviously don't), does anyone really think listening to these songs is going to turn people into gay junkie serial killers who drop out of school and have premarital sex?

He says return the ring

So, I saw The Return of the King today. There are some spoilers in what follows, so if you're the kind of person who cares about that kind of thing and you haven't seen the movie and/or read the book, you might want to skip the cut part.

( Read more... )

Oh, and I heard Neko Case on the radio for the first time ever. Well, I'd heard the New Pornographers on the radio, but not just her. WHYY (where I'm going to volunteer on Tuesday) was doing some Hank Williams tribute, and they played her version of "Alone And Forsaken." It was cool.