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I posted this in a comment to this Matt Yglesias post. As I usually do (shameless plug here), I copied it to the "Halfwit on Blogs" blog. Usually, I leave it at that but (a) I haven't posted on Gnomicon in ages and (b) this might induce some nostalgia-trippin' in certain Sarahs.
It's like the song says: you've got to be carefully taught.
Hearing that ("You've Got to be Carefully Taught") from the Wee Kids on the Kid Power album is surely before Matt's time. (To be fair, I never saw the show on television, since it was a little before _my_ time too. Still have the album though.)
And that seems like a harsh reminder that progress is won only inch by inch. The same sentiment that was an indictment of racism in 1949, and bore repeating in 1974, is equally appropriate regarding homophobia in 2008.
The more things change, the more ... we must fight for change.
2 comments:
I've been humming that song as I pass the "Yes on 8" fascists on every corner here in Fullerton. OK, sometimes I sing out loud, "To hate all the people your relatives hate, you've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be carefully taught!"
But your call to fight for change makes me sing the song about how the big fish keeps eating all of the little fish until all the little fish work together to kick his . . . wait a minute, fish don't have asses. How did that one go?
The song in question actually doesn't have the little fish uniting together. It just asserts that there is always a bigger fish (or, in the penultimate verse, a whale), so don't get too big for your fishy britches.
However, the song I keep singing always moved me the most, although I didn't really know what it was about, so this might get me in trouble with those of more nuanced sensibilities. But hey, what kind of misunderstanding could come from a blog?
"Uncle Tom, went away, never gonna come back, no way.
Uncle Tom, he is gone, once and for all."
Although the theme song itself, "Kid Power (All the Colors in Your Head)" was also pretty good. And I know RealPlayer is bad for you, but the sweet goodness of Kid Power surely can overcome that.
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