“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
H.L. Mencken
Well the humorless PC Brigades and their brainless SJW footpersons are coming for Baby It’s Cold Outside. Go here to read about this latest example of tolerance from the Left.
The tune was written in 1944 by songwriter Frank Loesser as a humorous party song he and his wife, Lynn, could sing together.
The song roles are written for pursing wolf and timid mouse.
It shouldn’t be on any Christmas playlist, as it has bupkis to do with Christmas, but it is funny and there should be nothing offensive about it to sane, mature people of either sex, who, unfortunately, seem to be in increasingly short supply.
The roles of wolf and mouse are easily sex reversed with hilarious effect:
This was back in more morally sane times when it was not expected that the song was leading up to a sexual encounter. Still, not a good match with Christmas. The song routinely on Christmas playlists that sends me up the wall is “Santa Baby”, that paean to greed and barely disguised prostitution.
There is no greater form of slavery than that which controls what you can or can’t say. Truth wasn’t meant to be be locked up to atrophy. Again, Christ was crucified because he refused to tolerate the PC of His day, and said what was uncomfortably true, mostly about the church leaders.
The way to extinguish the evil of truth suppression, is to speak it, loud and clear….and prepare to take the consequences.
Agreed Don L.
At some point you may have to Trust in God that the repercussions of your witness might hurt financially or socially, but the one who is worthy to be called The Christ will make new ways…new paths that His elect will travel on. Within this route one strengthens his relationship with God.
Easy? No. But worth the ridicule and the pains of swimming against the current. Clear clean water upstream! Make it to the headwaters. It’s all worth the effort!
Meh, they’re playing catch-up– there are some creepy versions of the song, but that observation is years old; you put your finger on it about the assumption that it’ll end in sex tipping the scale.
Next up, they go after “stalker songs”? (Sooooo tired of not being able to hear “Every Breath You Take” without someone giving the “clever” observation/lecture about stalker songs. Aaaaaagh.)
@Don L. On the contrary, there is no worse form of slavery than addiction, particularly addiction to sin.
“This was back in more morally sane times when it was not expected that the song was leading up to a sexual encounter.” So, Adam and Eve before the Fall? We do not need to be that naive. But even granting your dubious claim, what meaning does the song have in the present? We have to be aware of the times in which we now live. For example, IN THEORY it is possible to consider permitting married men to become priests, but NOT in an environment in which it would be seen as a concession to the “fact” that priests should not be expected to exercise sexual self-control; we have had too much of “give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile” in recent Church history. We live in a shameless and oversexed society; it is hard to argue that it is a terrible thing to lose a song about seduction.
I don’t particularly like this song, but if I dislike a song, then I simply don’t listen to it. I don’t demand that the song be banned merely because I dislike it. That’s asinine. And that is exactly what today’s snowflake millennial “my feelings are hurt” liberals are – asinine. Knowing now that they dislike that song, maybe I should listen to it – loudly with the speakers on my stereo blasting so that the snowflakes really will get offended. Truly I despise them far more than I dislike the song.
‘So, Adam and Eve before the Fall?”
Nope, back in the days when people could appreciate light entertainment and banter without assuming the worst.
” We have to be aware of the times in which we now live.”
Oh, I do, and this blog is a response to the fact that too many people are currently barking dog mad.
The public, the public domain is the recipient of this song,. No one individual is being stalked or harassed or forced to “like” it. Just say no… and turn the song off.
The group of politically correct officers is not the quarry of this song and they have the freedom of speech to turn it off. Unless they do they cannot hold any person responsible for the song.
And all this with co-ed bathrooms. locker rooms and showers?
“Nope, back in the days when people could appreciate light entertainment and banter without assuming the worst.” If you have read the lyrics, the song was not written in such a period.
“My mother will start to worry….” Why?
“My father will be pacing the floor….” Again, what fears might a father have for his daughter during the youth of “the Greatest Generation”?
“The neighbors might think….” But that’s not “assuming the worst”?
“My sister will be suspicious … My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious … There’s bound to be talk tomorrow ….” Her family and neighbors understood what you pretend not to understand — the real risk of something happening that could not be shown on a Bing Crosby movie, because those things happened in that decade as they have in every decade since at least the Tower of Babel.
“If you have read the lyrics, the song was not written in such a period.”
Of course it was since the song only works if the fears expressed are unfounded. The wolf pursuing the mouse loses all humor if the conclusion is foregone.
Again, what fears might a father have for his daughter during the youth of “the Greatest Generation”?
Dying in a car crash on an icy night?
Somebody sure seems agitated for a guy who, in another thread, spent some time arguing “it’s just a song.”
@Erns Schreiber — You’re not getting it at all. Neither of these songs is “catechesis”, as has been posited by someone else, but this IS a song about seduction. These are indeed just songs, but let’s be honest about what each song is saying.
How far does that seduction go? The society in which the song is set knew danged well that the fears were NOT unfounded that it would go too far. It is seduction, not rape; the “mouse” can resist (though she only half wants to, or even only wants to be able to say she tried to, as is clear from the song). But it is nonsense to pretend that seduction then was somehow different than seduction in every other generation.
As for humor, this ain’t Mairzy Doats. It is suggestion, something you won’t find in modern rap songs, if that’s what you have become accustomed to. This is not a joke about something that would never really happen; it’s not like
“Some day I’m going to murder the bugler,
Some day they’re going to find him dead;
I’ll amputate his reveille, and step upon it heavily,
And spend the rest of my life in bed.”
The joke about something that everyone knows will not happen comes from OVERSTATING it, not from putting out careful feelers to see how far one might be permitted to go.
Nah, Howard, you’re the one who is “not getting” it.
This is a time when being seduced into kissing could screw up your reputation, because it meant you were even somewhat vulnerable to being swayed.
In a weird way, our time is a warped mirror of then– I was always amazed to hear how much sex I was having as a virgin who would politely speak to just about anybody. Gossips gonna gossip.
@HOWARD
@Erns Schreiber — You’re not getting it at all. Neither of these songs is “catechesis””
I believe the issue is subliminal suggestion outlawed by the courts. That would mean that the intent of the song was to corrupt an individual. With no intent, the song is the expression of what the words say.
It is a song about seducing, and toying with being seduced. Certainly of questionable morality. But the difference between songs like that and now: class v. crass.
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