RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #157 (12/15/18): COLD OUTSIDE
(aired Dec. 15, 2018 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY54SIUvu0M&feature=youtu.be)
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 15, 2018.
(sings) “I really can’t stay (Bubbie, it’s cold outside). I gotta go away (Bubbie, it’s cold outside).”
What a catchy holiday-season tune that is—and what a surprise entry in the hashtag-Me-Too era of political correctness. In case you haven’t heard, two weeks ago, a radio station in California banned the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” on the grounds that it has sexist overtones that could encourage rape.
Written more than 70 years ago by a nice Jewish boy named Frank Loesser, who also gave us the forgotten sexist musicals, Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” does have an uncomfortable undertow. After all, it’s all about a man imploring his date to stay the evening and cuddle instead of braving the icy winter weather. Just because the air is frigid doesn’t mean she has to be. However, one line in the song has the lady questioning what’s in her drink—which is what every woman who ever dated Bill Cosby would like to know.
So the champions of other people’s feelings decided that this song—which has been performed by such chauvinist pigs as Eydie Gorme, Bette Midler, Anne Murray, Lady Gaga, and Idina Menzel—this song was suddenly inappropriate for radio airplay. God forbid a woman who was coerced into an uncompromising position—or several uncompromising positions—should be sitting in an Uber and hear this come on the speakers. Oh trauma! Oh PTSD! Oh, come on now.
I’m not saying there isn’t something a little ooky about Leon Redbone begging Zooey Deschanel to stay for another round of spiked eggnog, but this is sensitivity gone berserk. If you start taking songs written a zillion years ago, with PG-rated intentions, and see them with modern, X-rated glasses, you’ll never put on Spotify again.
Remember when “Louie Louie” was banned because radio programmers couldn’t figure out what the lyrics meant? Remember when the BBC banned The Who’s “My Generation”—I kid you not—because they thought Roger Daltrey was making fun of stutterers? And, yes, The Bangles’s “Walk Like an Egyptian” was banned by Clear Channel so as not to offend people of Middle-Eastern descent. Perhaps they should have changed the song to “Walk like a Saudi Arabian?” (sings) “Go in the embassy don’t come out. Get yourself hacked into bits…”.
As someone who appreciates art, and comedy and free speech and pornography—and not necessarily in that order—I am sick to death of the political correctness blanketing and suffocating the writers and performers of today. Look at Kevin Hart. He does a stand-up routine eight years ago poking fun at black people by poking fun at gay people—and suddenly he can’t host the Oscars anymore. And I thought gay people liked being poked.
And what about Michael Richards, from Seinfeld? He tries improv-ing a riff on race at a comedy club, fails miserably—and for a decade, his career was laid flatter than Rachel Corrie.
Now, if Rachel Corrie’s family is listening, I apologize for that joke. I’m not sorry for making it, but if I personally hurt your feelings, my apologies. And, of course, that’s never enough. Nowadays, if you apologize for offending someone—that’s getting you off too easy. You have to make believe you personally are filled with remorse and disgust for even thinking of the terrible thing you blurted out. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not that sorry. If you can’t listen to a joke without getting heart palpitations, your cardiologist owes you an apology, not me.
But back to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—which, by the way, was reinstated by that California radio station after an overwhelming number of listeners objected to the ban and said the tune was part of their harmless holiday hoopla. I’m gonna add one more h: hypocrisy. How easy for a self-righteous, snowflake radio programmer to say, “ooh, lemme score brownie points with women listeners by pulling this questionable song off the playlist.” Sure, but aren’tcha being a bit selective? The history of popular music is replete with tunes that are sexist, racist, and tasteless. Heck, the Rolling Stones wouldn’t have a career if they treated women as equals. “Under My Thumb”? “Look at that “Stupid Girl”? “Let’s spend the night together, now I need you more than ever?”—that sounds like coercion to me. “Midnight Rambler”—“I’ll stick my knife right down your throat?” And don’t get me started on “Stray Cat Blues”—“I can see that you’re 15 years old. And bring your friend who’s even wilder than you are.,,`cause baby, it’s cold outside.”
And the Stones aren’t the only ones. How about the Beatles? “Catch you with another man, that’s the end little girl” —that sounds like a direct threat and grounds for a restraining order. The Beach Boys: “I wish they all could be California girls.” Why, Brian Wilson? Because they’re blonde and white? Whatsamatter with girls from Boro Park or Harlem? Led Zeppelin—forget Jimmy Page shtupping an underage groupie in real life—even their songs. “Gonna give you every inch of my love?” What if she only wants half your inches? Or a third. Who are you to force her to take the whole megillah? I mean, in my case, it’s two-and-a-half inches, so no harm done, but be that as it may…
So many songs push the envelope of discomfort. If we censor one, must we not censor all? Even the less overt ones? Take “Blowing in the Wind.” Oh, sure, most see it a protest song, but I’ll betcha it triggers a girl or two who was blowing in the back seat. And what about “America, the Beautiful?” Alternate national anthem, you say? Homophobic, I say! “Above the fruited plain”? Fruits belong above with everyone else—just like in the West Village.
Goyim, are you dreaming of a White Christmas? Maybe it’s because you’ve zoned the blacks out of your neighborhood. Simon and Garfunkel—“The Sound of Silence.” Silence has no sound; you’re just fooling deaf people. How cruel! And speaking of sadism, let’s not forget that bastion of insensitivity towards the differently abled: “Amazing Grace.” “Was blind, but now I see.” So you’re saying you’re better than people who are still sightless? “Oh, I was blind, but then I cleaned up my act and now, “Pfffth on you, Ray Charles! Go read a waffle iron, Helen Keller! I’m in the seeing crowd now!”
I’m not saying every song is kind and correct. Some tunes could use a parental sticker: “Warning: Written in 1947 when women were still considered property.” But it’s time for the arts to kick out bleeding hearts. Too many careers are being stunted, too many writers are self-censoring, too many knee-jerk decisions are being made on the basis of, “Gee, there’s a manic depressive somewhere who might hear this and kick over the stool.” Let’s all calm the hell down. If we’ve gotten used to the President’s tweets, we can sing along to a tune with a wince-worthy lyric.
After all, on Passover we end the Seder with “Chad Gadya,” a children’s ditty about animals being beaten and butchered, eating each other, the angel of death kills a guy—if there’s a song that’s gonna send some nine-year-old into math class with his dad’s AR-15, “Chad Gadya” is it.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
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