Re: Songs of Sexism?

[THRH79B@prodigy.com ( K D GILES)]

ML:

>In that anyone who is upset with someone else is likely to react 
with
>the difference between that person and themselves...whether the 
person
>is a woman or you-name-it...doesn't this "sexist" lyric really come 
down
>to Pete being an excellent writer? Real life! Maybe it was shocking 
to
>some because it was in fact so realistic, and most songwriters 
didn't
>dare.

While I would not normally be one to argue against Pete being an 
excellent writer, I feel that the lyric "What is it, I'll take it/Who 
is she, I'll rape it" is a far cry from his usual fine work.  Even if 
one ignores the fact that many people find this lyric offensive, and 
worse still, that others take it literally but do NOT find it 
offensive (the man sitting behind me at the 11/1/96 Quad show was 
gleefully shouting "Rape!  Rape!" throughout "Dr. Jimmy"), it is just 
a clumsy line.  The grammatical error may be due to poetic license 
(Jimmy thinking of the woman in question as nothing more than an 
object, an "it" rather than a "her"), but it is hard for me to 
overlook the deviation from the song's rhyme scheme.  Since there are 
any number of words that rhyme with "take", and several that rhyme 
with "rape", I can only assume that Pete was being lazy when he wrote 
this line.  It is certainly not his best work.

>Perhaps said in jest, but never seriously. It's sad that such a jest 
in
>today's political climate is considered offensive. Keith would have 
had
>a hard time with it, I'm sure. Would Moon be a considered a lovable
>scamp in the `90's, or instead a reactionary?

An interesting question, but I don't think Keith Moon in the 1990's 
would be the same Keith Moon we are familiar with.  If Moonie were 
alive today, it would only be because he had made dramatic changes in 
his lifestyle.  I don't think anyone could lead the kind of life he 
led and still survive into their 50's.  And since we are all affected 
by our environment (and by extension the times we live in), a Keith 
Moon born at some later date would not be the same person as the 
Keith Moon born in 1947.

-Yellow "Speakin' as a child of the 90's" Ledbetter