Insensitivity and Hurtfulness / More on Debates and Equal > Time

[Eli Polonsky]

> > From: "Robert S Chase" <attychase@comcast.net>
> To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
> Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 14:27:07 -0500
> Subject: Insensitivity and Hurtfulness / More on Debates and
> Equal Time
> 
> On the subject of who can be the most insensitive or hurtful:
> 
> I still can't listen to that short people song without getting
> extremely mad at Newman or whoever is performing it. I can't
> tell if that is the way Newman himself really feels or it was
> a parody. 

Unfortunately, that was Newman's only Top 40 hit (though he had
written many more that had been recorded by others), so for many
people who did not already know about him from his many previous
albums, "Short People" had been their first and only exposure to
him and his acerbic style of parody and satire, which he used to
that effect to often paint ridiculous musical pictures of bigots,
racists, and other people he considered to be narrow-minded and
needed to be put down, by performing songs in their character.

If you go into some of the other tracks on his albums, he has
similar satirical put-downs of racists, bigots, warmongering
politicians, etc... all sung in the first person, as if he were
the portraying the person he was satirizing.

When he took on those roles in his music, he was very much like
a musical version of Carroll O'Connor's portrayal of fictitious
(but very much like certain people I knew) Archie Bunker on "All
In The Family". Did people think that Mr. O'Connor actually may
have believed the positions and epithets that were espoused by
his character? Playing a named character on a television show
created a distinct separation between O'Connor himself and the
character he portrayed.

The satire was less obvious with Newman singing songs he had
written under his own name. Perhaps that may have been part of
his approach, to play a musical character that was in people's
faces as if he may have really meant what he was parodying, to
drive home the effect and the reality that there really are
people who think in such narrow-minded ways, and that such
thought should not be condoned or tolerated. Anyone who has
gone deeper into his catalogue or has heard an interview with
him would know that, but most people only know him for "Short
People" and think that he's a bigot who came out of nowhere and
had meant what he was singing on that one hit.

> From what I see when he performs it he may actually believe it,
> I know all the people that believe it get a big kick out of it.

He doesn't believe it, and he is lampooning people who do. It's
an unfortunate by-product that people who actually do identify
with it applaud it for the wrong reason.

> My experience is that a lot of tall people are bigots, usurpers
> and bullies. (For that matter so aren't a lot of short people
> although usually they need to get into a group to carry it off.

Not necessarily true. I've seen and met "bullies" of all heights,
especially in business. One of the most abusive radio station
managers I had ever encountered was not at all a tall person.

EP