Oh, I'm not surprised that they might have had someone who apparently can't read stumble into Eschaton, a blog by a writer who doesn't write and hasn't for well over a decade, he having given up because the people who go to Eschaton never read what he wrote to start with. It's a blog both for people who won't read and don't think.
I would call Steve Simels the Corey Lewandowski of Duncan's blog but any of the pathological liars of Trumpzi politics would do as well. Anyone who pretty much always lies. It's a hoot that they've got a newbie who doesn't realize that yet. I wouldn't expect it to turn into a ground swell as that hasn't been happening in the past dozen or so years of Duncan pretty much phoning it in. They sure can grow em lazy in the Ivy League.
As for Bachrach and David, anyone who doesn't think their songs of the 1960s presented women in swinishly sexist terms has got to be an old straight man. I mean the putrid, "Wives and Lovers"?
Hey! Little Girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger
You needn’t try anymore
For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I’m warning you…
Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again
For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He’s almost here…
Hey! Little girl
Better wear something pretty
Something you’d wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
Time to get ready
Time to get ready for love
Really, "I'm warning you"? Any woman with any sense of not being a goddamned doormat would have smacked the asshole in the face with a frying pan, stopped bothering with the curlers turned off the goddamned last bell and said, "To hell with this" and found happiness alone or with a woman or even the rare straight man of the era who would consider her a human being and honored her dignity, not used her like an Accujack*. And, lest anyone forget, it's a song written by two men. If I'd heard Jack Jones crooning that at me I'd have gone postal.
And that was only one of their songs of advice and modeling women as being rightly victims of pre-second wave feminist male supremacy. Their thinking was exactly what made the feminism of the late 60s and 70s essential and why it still is.
Not everything they wrote was an anthem of sexism and male supremacy but anyone who tried to have a relationship on the basis of their thinking would probably end up either insane or many times divorced. It certainly wouldn't work out well for any woman. Their thinking was entirely conventional and banal, I mean, sure, Burt could write a tune and his harmonic sense wasn't as crappy as John Lennon's but they were pop writers and it doesn't go any farther than that. Anyone who tried to live their lives on the basis of pop culture certainly wouldn't be anything but vapid and stupid and constantly screwing up.... they'd reach 70 and be as much of a dope as Simps.
* Yeah, I decided to go there.
Update: Again REMEMBER THIS IS A SONG WRITTEN BY TWO MEN DESCRIBING HOW WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO THINK.
One less bell to answer
One less egg to fry
One less man to pick up after
I should be happy
But all I do is cry (cry, cry, no more laughter)
I should be happy (oh, why did he go)
I only know that since he left my life's so empty
Though I try to forget it just can't be done
Each time the doorbell rings I still run
I don't know how in the world
To stop thinking of him
'Cause I still love him so
I spend each day the way I start out?
Crying my heart out
One less man to pick up after
No more laughter, no more love
Since he went away (he went away)
(One less bell to answer) why did he leave me (oh why, why did he leave)
(One less bell to answer) now I've got one less egg to fry one less egg to fry
(Oh why, why did he leave) and all I do is cry
(One less bell to answer) because a man told me goodbye (oh why, why did he leave)
(One less bell to answer) somebody tell me please where did he go, why did he go
(Oh why, why did he leave) how could he leave me)
Anyone, female or male (I don't think Hal David or Burt Bachrach could have imagined a man thinking like that) who is in that state needs to fucking pick themselves off of the mat and say, that asshole should have picked up after himself, learned to fry his own damned eggs and stopped ringing that fucking bell! If they're unhappy to be rid of such a jerk their problem isn't that they need that or any other such baby man in their life, it's that they need to have their consciousness raised. Geesh, 2nd wave feminism is as relevant today as it was then or we wouldn't have the kind of asshole they modeled as normal men in the Whitehouse.
"Anyone who tried to live their lives on the basis of
ReplyDeletepop culture certainly wouldn't be anything but vapid and stupid and
constantly screwing up."
Do you know anybody who tries to live their lives on the basis of the lyrics of popular music? I certainly don't.
It's official, Sparky -- you're fucking insane.
Good heavens, Stups, the personal lives of pop singers, movie stars, celebrities, Bert was married, what, four, five times?
DeleteLots of idiots get suckered into trying to live their lives on those terms. Donald Trump has pretty much lived that kind of pop culture "good life" and left a trail of human wreckage in his wake.
So you're saying that Burt Bachrach - an artist who gave happiness to millions with his music -- is the moral equivalent of Donald Trump?
DeleteHave I mentioned it's official -- you're completely insane?
No, that's what a lying, pathological asshole like you would pretend to think that's what that means so you can post it at Duncan's Atheneum of the Post Literate and Pre-Senile.
DeleteAnd I'd reject that Bacharach's music gave happiness. It moved air and occupied a fraction of the attention of people who had it on. Though I will specify that it would have worked out better for the guys than the gals who were told to serve and be available for the guys, if that's what you mean.
Delete"I'd reject that Bacharach's music gave happiness."
DeleteGiven that you're, demonstrably, a miserable emotionally stunted joyless prig, that doesn't surprise me at all.
The childish don't understand an adult level of happiness. The pleasures of adulthood are bound to be incomprehensible to you.
DeleteAnd I think you need to change your pants, again.
You've been an old fogey since elementary school, Sparkles. The fact that you think that makes you some kind of wise, mature grownup is beyond hilarious.
DeleteI'll let that stand as an example of your stupidity.
Delete"And, lest anyone forget, it's a song written by two men. If I'd heard Jack Jones crooning that at me I'd have gone postal."
ReplyDeleteAh, but if it had been his father Allan Jones you would have wet your pants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHNlfT6B9E
I don't suffer from incontinence as you do, Simps.
DeleteOoh, snap. I'm devastated by your ad-lib prowess once again.
ReplyDelete:-)
Well, go change your pants before you get a rash.
DeleteRe: One Less Bell to Answer.
ReplyDeleteApparently you don't know what a torch song is.
Yet another surprise. Not.
Stupy, I probably know more of that crap than you do. When I was in school and someone asked me to accompany one I always told them I didn't do "torchy trashy shit".
DeleteDoesn't make it anything other than I said it was because you classify it. It just means that that crap's been classified.
Torchy trashy shit like Jerome Kern?
ReplyDeleteGood for you, Sparky. A courageous stand against "My Bill."
Yeah, and that turned out real good for Julie, drinking herself to death while singing in dives where the owners knew she was washed up after the bun got himself killed in a knife fight.
DeleteMusicals are shit, though some of the songs written for them are a lot better than that.
I'll Be Hard To Handle is a lot better than that piece of tripe.
Julie was the victim of racial prejudice, not loving a bum.
ReplyDeleteBut why am I telling you? After all, as you've informed us, you're the real feminist.
I showed you the record where I said I would never call myself a feminist, on Echidne's blog. It was one of the first things I wrote when she invited me to be a regular writer for her. If QL "remembers" me saying that, she's suffering Duncan's Dementia caused by too much time on Eschaton.
DeleteBOTH Julie and Magnolia were fools for love, hitched to selfish losers who were both white men. The book by Edna Ferber was a lot better than the book for that silly musical.
"Found happiness alone or with a woman..."
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, Dusty Springfield (who covered a few Bacharach/David compositions) tried exactly that, saying men "frightened" her. She entered into a relationship with an actress who hit her with a saucepan and knocked out some teeth. But at least it wasn't the patriarchy! Being a gay man, you should know better than most that relationships can be hard regardless of the sex of the partners.
"Geesh, 2nd wave feminism is as relevant today as it was then or we wouldn't have the kind of asshole they modeled as normal men in the Whitehouse."
Trump has money, and fame, and that's what people, men and women, want, and are willing to tolerate boorish behavior to access it. Without Bacharach/David compositions, he'd still be in the White House. I would argue his occupying the desk in the oval office is as much because of "woke" would-be do-gooders as the guys who wrote "What The World Needs Now."
Anyway, I prefer Goffin/King, and feminists hate her early stuff too. But they don't like nothing, anyway.
There's no guarantee that any relationship is going to work out but I know of more lesbian relationships that are not pathological than just about any other arrangement.
DeleteDusty Springfield obviously had issues, she had a terrible self-harming compulsion. She had a great, great voice and I liked her a lot but the musical milieu in which she worked was often not worthy of her abilities. He recording of The Look of Love is classic, that song is obviously not part of the body of work I was talking about, I noted that not all of the Bachrach-David catalog was pathological, though I still say that Laura Nyro was way better alone than they were together.
Your issue with feminists apparently leads you to not see that they are not a monolithic, undifferentiated entity.
DeleteWell of course they're not a monolithic entity! But humor doesn't work if you have to explain or qualify it. I have a Swiftian perspective on group behavior, and have met and enjoyed the company of many self-described feminists. But these were individuals. I've no doubt if grouped together I wouldn't care for them. This is consistent with my line of reasoning of almost all collectives political and social. Even religious, though there at least I can play the "we're all sinners - especially you" card and they can't argue.
Delete'Dusty In Memphis' is a great album. I got it because of 'Pulp Fiction,' and it's where I discovered Goffin/King. By the way, Dusty didn't think her version of "Preacher Man" was definitive. Shows that talent and taste are not always meted out equally.