"... and so did the news media. CBS took reruns of his show off the air. The controversy now seems preposterously overblown. That happened just one year before Sinead O’Connor’s career suffered a blow from her protest on 'Saturday Night Live' against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church — an episode that has come under new examination after her death last week. It’s clear that dopey moralizing scandals are far from a hallmark of our age alone...."
If only there were blogging back then! The "dopey moralizing scandals" — is that the right phrase? — of the time had to do with fearsome sexuality. I don't think it's wise to explain them as transitory dopiness. We can always predict that 3 decades later we will look back and think we were dumb, but it's also dumb to think that there's no worthy morality, just "dopey moralizing."
"... consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign... [the campaign against] cigarette use.... While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV....
Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters. But the use of firearms onscreen can certainly be more intentional. Reaching for the gun in the course of storytelling isn’t always necessary. The best cinematic fight scene by far this year involved a weaponized fanny pack...."
They're still glamorizing violence! I would hate to see filmmakers pour their imagination into weaponizing more of the many ordinary objects that surround us.
I'll bet you can think of some deadly household items you've witnessed over the years. Help me make a list. I'll start with the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock frozen leg of lamb. And the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly:
This is something I hit on googling "joni mitchell lyrics peppermint" as I was blogging a magazine article about the loveliness of the Kate Spade retail store that contained the line "listening to Joni Mitchell and eating peppermints while we waited for customers." I had the feeling there was a Joni Mitchell song with the word "peppermints." I was wrong, but I love what I found looking for something that didn't exist:
Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their "passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect."... [H]e has been described as having been a "genuine nerd, with a geek reputation running back to his days as a futurist Atari Democrat in the House. Before computers were comprehensible, let alone sexy, the poker-faced Gore struggled to explain artificial intelligence and fiber-optic networks to sleepy colleagues."... Gore introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986....
In 1985, Tipper Gore co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)... because Gore heard her then 11-year-old daughter Karenna playing "Darling Nikki" by Prince. The group's goal was to increase parental and consumer awareness of music that contained explicit content through voluntary labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers... Gore explained that her purpose wasn't to put a "gag" on music, but to keep it safe for younger listeners by providing parents with information about the content of the songs. A number of individuals including Dee Snider of Twisted Sister,[21] Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, John Denver, Joey Ramone, and Frank Zappa criticized the group, arguing that it was a form of censorship....
Folk rock musician John Denver stated he was "strongly opposed to censorship of any kind in our society or anywhere else in the world", and that in his experience censors often misinterpret music, as was the case with his song "Rocky Mountain High"...
I presume that means the song was interpreted to refer to getting high on drugs.
When Denver came up to give his speech, many on the PMRC board expected him to side with them, thinking he would be offended by the lyrics as well...
He was offended by censorship (and agreed with the broad meaning of what counts as censorship).
Anyway, you can see why Spin magazine was making fun of Tipper Gore in 1986. Click the image of the article to enlarge it enough to read. There's some great stuff in there and a nice illustration by Sara Schwartz. I'll just leave you with the song title that made that article show up in my Google search, "Peppermint Stick" by The Elchords:
I'll leave it to you to decide whether that 1958 recording contains the line "Peppermint stick/Eat my dick."
In the comments to the first post of the day, we were talking about the line "We can try to understand/The New York Times' effect on man" which appears in a NYT video about people doing an exercise routine in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I said:
Here's a discussion of the line... [in the] book "Hot Stuff: Disco and The Remaking of American Culture"... "Presumably [the Bee Gees] were trying to fit in a reference to the city and convey something about upward mobility. But these are such inelegant, head-shaking lines that for years critic Dave Marsh, eager for more class-conscious lyrics, misheard them as 'We can try to understand / The New York Times don't make a man.'"
The author of the book observes that the movies shows the NYT delivered each morning to the female character. I would add — based on decades-old memory of ["Saturday Night Fever"] — that the NYT represented the NYC that the characters — who lived in seedy 70s Brooklyn — dreamed of reaching some day and the characters do make it to Manhattan in the end.
But is the word "magazine" hard to work with? Magazine is kind of a great set of syllables. And magazines stir up so many aspirations and desires. Why wouldn't you write a song with the word "magazine"?
2 songs that had popped into my head were not on the list: "Bennie and the Jets" ("She's got electric boots a mohair suit/You know I read it in a magazine"). And "Darling Nikki" — the song that upset Tipper Gore — rhymes "magazine" with "a sex fiend":
Then I found this Guardian article that for no apparent reason had already fixated on the topic and put together a playlist of 55 songs.
Me: "That's the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I'm researching the origin of the phrase 'canyons of your mind.' What do you think is the first appearance of that phrase?"
Now, I believe the answer to my question is "Elusive Butterfly," which was a hit in 1965 by the man who wrote the song, Bob Lind. It's rolling through the canyons of my mind this morning a propos of Florence Henderson saying that 1960s NY Mayor John Lindsay gave her the crabs. "Gentle on My Mind" was written by John Hartford in 1967.
This idea of the brain as a landscape — it's such a standard hippie trope — is it there in "Gentle on My Mind"? Yes. This singer sings of traveling alone but seeing his girlfriend "walkin' on the backroads/By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind." The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is mocking "canyons of your mind" in 1968, but Bob Lind was serious in 1965: "You might have heard my footsteps/Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind."
Also mocking the phrase was Frank Zappa in "We're Turning Again" (at 3:25):
"We can turn it around/We can do it again/We can go back in time/Through the canyons of your mind On the Eve of Destruction/We can act like we are something really special/We'll just jump in the bathtub/With that other guy Jim/And make him be more careful/We can visit Big Mama/And whap her on the back/When she eats her sandwich/We can take care of Janis..."
That's got to be much later than 1965, because Jim Morrison died in the bathtub in 1971. Yes, it's the opening track on the 1985 album "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention." "Mothers of Prevention" referred, of course, to The Parents Music Resource Center — you know, that Tipper Gore warning-label business, against which Zappa testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, saying, among other things: "A couple of blowjobs here and there and — bingo! — you get a hearing."
Who knew then that in the next decade — the next canyon of the nation's mind — Tipper's husband would be Vice President, and everyone would be talking about blowjobs?
Stray fact encountered chasing the bright elusive butterfly of canyons of your mind: A movie inspired John Hartford to write "Gentle on My Mind": It was, oddly enough, "Dr. Zhivago."
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the canyons of my miiiiiiiind.
That came quite late in the development of hippie tropes — in 1972. How lame, but there were takers for that kind of lameness that year. The original artists were the very douche-y Seals & Croft. And that song has been covered by many artists over the years, including by Jason Mraz (who seems perfectly Seals & Croft-y) and Type O Negative (which is odd). Also odd: I once saw Type O Negative in concert! I must say that of all the bands I saw in my days of chauffeuring teenagers to concerts, there was only one band that I couldn't find it in myself to appreciate, and that was Type O Negative. So hail, Type O Negative! And listen to the Type O Negative "Summer Breeze," here. If you need to air out your mind canyons after that, here's that nice young man Jason Mraz.
Mraz lives a health-conscious lifestyle and has said that he eats mostly raw vegan foods. His vegan diet has also influenced his music. He owns a five-and-a-half acre avocado farm in Bonsall, California. He is an investor at Café Gratitude, a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles.... His hobbies include surfing, yoga and photography.
IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said:
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the canyons of my miiiiiiiind.
Maybe it was unreachable because that is not how it goes!
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Roughcoat:
Oh crap, I can't believe I got it wrong--"canyons" instead of "jasmine."
The 70s was a confusing time for me. Still is, obviously.
Prince lyric, which just occurred to me in the context of the feminist-in-the-elevator-at-the-atheist-convention incident. Prince was telling us to live now, because we're all going to die, which he sometimes said clearly — "You better live now/Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door" — and sometimes said absurdly — "Let's look for the purple banana/Until they put us in the truck." He also expressed a clear belief in the afterlife. ("In this life/Things are much harder than in the afterworld/In this life/You're on your own.") He's no atheist. How he behaves in an actual in-this-life elevator, as opposed to a metaphorical elevator, I have no idea. I bet he silently occupies his corner and avoids eye contact, in classic elevator etiquette, and waits for his floor.
Sorry I can't link to a Prince "Let's Go Crazy" video. Prince is super-possessive about his songs and doesn't appreciate the value of letting people like Althouse win him new fans. So here's 1. Beck, "Elevator Music" and 2. Eminem, "Elevator." Beck says:
All the dudes with banjos
Chicks with wicks
Animals with bananas...
Eminem says:
That’s a no no who even she knows dada’s f-cking crazy
Fucking animal, cookoo, bananas, fucking AP
Whether those are purple bananas, I don't know.
ADDED: Actually, for now, at least, here's Prince, "Let's Go Crazy."
AND: For the sake of completeness, there is at least one more elevator/banana song.
"I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" — the first single by the Young Rascals. That clip is their first TV appearance (in 1965). I remember when their 2d single — "Good Lovin'" — came out: the radio DJ expressed relief that the band had improved the moral level of their music, as if "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" was rather smutty. I was 14 at the time, and it was only much later that I was able to imagine that the DJ had disaggregated the words "eat out" from the idiomatic expression "eat your heart out."
The lyric at 1:11 prompts a search for that Prince song... what is it? It's one of the "Purple Rain" songs. Ah! Here.
Was Prince influenced by The Rascals? Did Prince misconstrue the 1965 lyric like that DJ maybe did? We all know Prince got terribly smutty. It upset Tipper Gore so much:
The case reopened in January 2009. Detectives interviewed the woman but determined there was insufficient evidence to support the allegations.
In a transcript of the interview, the massage therapist said she was doing requested abdominal work on Mr. Gore when he demanded she go lower.
“I was shocked and I did not massage beyond what is considered a safe, nonsexual area of the abdomen,” she said. “He further insisted and acted angry, becoming verbally sharp and loud.
”I went into much deeper shock as I realized it appeared he was demanding sexual favors or sexual behaviors.”
She alleged he later tried to have sex with her.
“I did not immediately call the police as I feared being made into a public spectacle and my reputation being destroyed,” she said. “I was not sure what to tell them and was concerned my story would not be believed since there was no DNA evidence from a completed act of rape.”
There are so many questions. How credible is this woman? Women can lie, but if we reject them reflexively, it means that men can always get away with this crime, which occurs in private. What did the police say to her that discouraged her? Why is she coming forward now? Was she offered money/favors to back off or is she pressing forward for money now? Gore is a billionaire. If Gore really did what she said, does it suggest that he's had other massages and developed a modus operandi of requesting abdominal work, etc. etc. Is the abdomen a normal part of a legitimate massage? I've had a lot of full body massages in my time, and the abdomen was never included. But I am a woman. Maybe it's normal for a man. Or do you have to make a special request? Like Al's abs could be really knotted up from too many crunches. Look at him. How could he need abdominal work? As opposed to abdominal play. But, of course, the argument from his side has to be that the woman is lying. How awful this all is? And what of poor Tipper? Could this have something to do with the marriage breakup?
Second thought: oh, yes! I completely want to see what Larry does with this: his wife having sex with... gasp!... Al Gore.
Run with it, Larry. I loved when "South Park" mocked Al Gore — as ManBearPig. He makes a great figure of fun. Come on, Larry. Puncture that inflated globe of a man.
We were just checking out Laurie David's website. My, she looks distinguished there. And I love that Albert Einstein quote she uses in her banner: "We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if manbearpig is to survive.
[Star Magazine] says the ex-veep and the comedian's ex have been involved for two years....
Laurie David ... co-produced "An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning documentary about Gore and his campaign against global warming....
"The story is completely untrue," Laurie David said in a statement. "It's a total fabrication. I adore both Al and Tipper. I look at them both as family. And I have happily been in a serious relationship since my divorce."....
The Gores' stunning split after 40 years of marriage has prompted wildly varying explanations in the gossip sheets: Globe magazine said Al was gay, and the National Enquirer said Tipper was crazy.
Separation and divorce are supposed to be bad. Marriage is a sacrament to many, a promise and a moral commitment to God and each other....
This is published in the WaPo's wretched "On Faith" section.
Not only should we respect their decision, but in some ways we should rejoice in it.....
They were together for 40 years, raised four kids, shared a lot of pain and a lot of joy, they have had an extraordinarily exciting life together and they should be proud of that. But people change, even those who are deeply committed to each other.....
People change and grow in different directions. That's seems to be what happened to the Gores....
That's seems to be it all right. I rejoice in your careful writing on this matter of deep and possibly sacred import.
There are those who will argue that marriage is a commitment that should be honored no matter what. That separating or divorcing because you are not totally fulfilled is egotistical or selfish. But what are you committing to when you get married? An institution? A spoken obligation?
Or are you committing yourself to a full partnership where each person is equal, mutually respectful and in love?
If that is the case, then Al and Tipper Gore made the right decision 40 years ago. And they made the right decision now.
But look, Sally, here's something new to massage into the squishy goo of your analysis:
The eldest daughter of Al and Tipper Gore, Karenna, has been separated from her husband, Andrew Schiff, for a couple months....
Karenna is 36. Andrew is 44. They married in 1997 and have three young children.
Rejoice? Great gift? Dignity and grace? Pride in the past shared life?
Now, this headline really is about Rush Limbaugh. Sorry to make the link to Gawker, because they're being a little mean about it, but that's where I saw it first. Somehow, I didn't expect it, even though I heard him say on Wednesday's show that he was going to be away until June 16th. The reason he gave was that he was going to get another English sheepdog to drive his cat crazy.
Gawker:
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, 59, is marrying his 33-year-old girlfriend Kathryn Rogers in Palm Beach this Saturday. He's said some nice things about Gawker in the past, so we wanted to wish him and his betrothed a lifetime of happiness. But Rush is not inviting members of the media to the event for some reason. So we came up with a work-around and rented one of those big airborne billboards to fly down the coast—and over his house—during the wedding.
Now we need your help in coming up with a pithy slogan to share with Rush, his bride-to-be, and the assembled guests. Submit them in the comments, please!
Ladies and gentlemen, Algore and Tipper amidst all of this, separated. Forty years of marriage. The interesting thing about this, you can't say, "You know, they just didn't really know each other. They got married too soon. Their lives changed just way too much." Forty years. Forty years and you split up. That is not comforting....
He quotes Sally Quinn on CBS saying: "I've been on the phone with friends ever since I heard it yesterday, and everyone feels as though somehow their own marriages have split up. It's -- you know, watching the Gores is sort of looking at the possibilities of what a good marriage could be, and when they -- when it doesn't work for them you sort of think, 'Oh, my God, maybe it's not possible.'" Rush finds that quite bizarre:
How many of you, I must ask, how many of you who have known friends who got divorced felt like your marriage was dissolving at the same time? Any of you? You know what you're thinking about when a couple you know gets divorced? You're thinking, "Okay, which one of them do we like best? Which one are we going to continue to socialize with and which one are we gonna ostracize." That's what you're thinking. You're not thinking, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, my marriage is in trouble, too. Why, Biff and Sally here just split up."
He's into believing in marriage there — even as he zeroes in on the hilarious (and painful!) truth.
All right, you want me to explain it to you? The Gore divorce. I'm stunned none of my bright, overrated staff understand what really happened here. You separate after a 40-year marriage? I mean, that's... (sigh) That's just not done.
He sighs!
How often do you hear about that? Now, what it seems to me... This a pure, wild guess speculation, but it's also intelligence guided by experience. If you are separating after 40 years, it means that there's been trouble in paradise for many years. However, look at what's happened now. The kids are all gone; they're out of the nest.
She stood out of the way and let Algore make his gazillions. She gets out just before Algore starts the drooling old man part of his life. She's rich and she's got her whole life ahead of her....
A caller suggests that Al cheated on Tipper:
RUSH: That's hard to envision....
Another caller:
CALLER: The key word, Rush, is money. Whichever way it goes. I think it's to protect his fortune somehow.
RUSH: Or... Well, yeah. That's not exactly my theory. You said you were calling to agree with my theory.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, it's something to do with money. That's all I know.
RUSH: Well, my theory -- I don't need to go through it again but my theory -- basically was if you're going to get divorced after 40 years, it can't all have been hunky-dory but you hang in there for various reasons. The kids...
CALLER: Yeah. I would hate to think it's an affair, I really would.
RUSH: Yeah, that's just... That's the stuff of nightmares. That wouldn't compute. I totally agree.
In an unusual piece of research, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh graded the sexual aggressiveness of lyrics, using songs by popular artists on the US Billboard chart. The lyrics were graded from the least to the most sexually degrading. They then asked 711 students aged 15 to 16 at three local high schools about their music preferences and their sexual behaviour.
Overall, 31 percent of the teens had had intercourse. But the rate was only 20.6 percent among those who had been least exposed to sexually degrading lyrics but 44.6 percent among those highly exposed to the most degrading lyrics.
The study's lead author, Brian Primack, said music by itself was not the direct spark for sex but helped mould perception and was thus "likely to be a factor" in sexual development. "These lyrics frequently portray aggressive males subduing submissive females, which may lead adolescents to incorporate this 'script' for sexual experience into their world view"...
"Non-degrading" lyrics described sex in a non-specific way and as a mutually consensual act, while "degrading" lyrics described sexual acts as a purely physical, graphic and dominant act.
First, there is something strange about using the term "degrading" instead of the usual "graphic." I should think that people who listen to graphic lyrics are already interested in having sex and are not merely learning that sex is somehow mandatory and perfunctory. If you are inclined toward sex, graphic lyrics aren't degrading. And it's not right to classify any dominant sexual male as degrading the woman. That says more about the classifier than the lyricist!
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, lyrics by Prince on his album "Purple Rain" prompted wives of senior politicians in Washington, led by Tipper Gore, to set up the Parents Music Resource Center.
Oh, for the love of God, leave Prince alone. Now, of course, his lyrics were very sexy, and he did influence many of us women to want — and even have — more sex. But the song that upset Tipper so much was "Darling Nikki." Read the lyrics. Nikki was not an innocent, subordinate female degraded by a dominating Prince. Nikki was the dominant one, and if anybody was overcome or degraded, it was Prince. It was the dominant female that freaked out Tipper.
Anyway, if you have young kids, protect them from graphic song lyrics. That is your job. But don't lose your mind and start calling things degrading unless they really are. All sorts of song lyrics, including some of the most beautifulold standards, depict a relationship in which one person — usually the singer — is overwhelmed by and enslaved to his or her lover. It's ridiculous to get bent out of shape over that.
Sixteen interesting things about Al Gore, from David Remnick's article in The New Yorker.
1. Leon Russell is one of his neighbors—in the Belle Meade section of Nashville.
2. Tipper Gore keeps a drum set in the living room.
3. They keep bugs out of their yard with a "system that sprays a fine mist of ground chrysanthemums from various discreet sources."
4. Gore is “having a blast.”
5. Gore has an eccentric artist friend who is "a crazy kinda guy” who's got a band called Monkey Bowl that's "a cross between the Fugs and Ali G."
6. Gore thinks the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas is "a ve-rrry interesting guy."
7. Gore has a problem with television: “There is just nothing on the dendrite level about watching television."
8. Gore is interested in "flow." Me too!
9. Gore has been avoiding “Fahrenheit 9/11." Me too!
10. Politics was a bad career choice for Gore because as an introvert, he's drained after an event. Clinton, an extrovert, is invigorated.
11. Gore didn't use Clinton in the 2000 campaign because he loves Tipper so much and cares about marital fidelity.
12. Gore thinks Bush is "a very weak man" who let other people push him around. He says Bush "was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11." Gore doesn't think Bush is dumb, just "incurious." (Who started that "incurious" meme? It must have originally been a play on "Curious George.")
13. Gore doesn't seem to like Kerry very much. The two co-senators did not have much of a relationship, even though they had something in common: "aloofness." But, per Gore, Kerry "took the initiative to reach out to me and to identify the fact that he felt the relationship was not what it could be and should be and asked to sit down and talk about it and jointly create a basis for a much better working relationship. " That must have been one hell of a polysyllabic conversation.
14. Gore keeps an Apple G4 on the table when he eats a meal in front of the New Yorker reporter, who peeks at his bookmarks: the Times, the Washington Post, Google News, mediawhoresonline.com, truthout.com.
15. Gore seems a bit obsessed by a memo Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote just before he went on the Supreme Court. The memo argues that conservatives should strongly defend free enterprise because it is “'under broad attack' by well-funded leftists, who dominate the media, academia, and even some corners of the political world. " As if Justice Powell is at the root of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.
16. Gore doesn't like Bush's Christian fundamentalism because it doesn't have enough of the Sermon on the Mount in it—not enough about helping the poor. He and Tipper can't even find a church to attend in Nashville: “The influx of fundamentalist preachers have pretty much chased us out with their right-wing politics."
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