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Thursday, August 07, 2008
Randy Newman: Making the Case for "Korean Parents"
Randy Newman discusses the song "Korean Parents" from his album Harps and Angels.
As Paul Simon said "I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers." Randy Newman would never be convicetd because he has no peers.
I feel bad that Randy has to defend himself. (I write this as a man whose kids have a Korean mother.) The fake Korean music sounds like the Siamese cats from "Lady and the Tramp", but only people without a sense of humor would miss its sarcasm. Thanks to Randy for explaining himself, but you either get him or you don't.
I actually thought this songs was a swipe at American parents not doing a good job raising their kids which turns out more dummer than the last generation & they are responsible. Oh well like Eddie Vedder of Pear Jam said, "The reason I don't expalin what the song is really all about is because people have different meaning what the song is all about."
As a short man when "Short People" was popular it was a bit disconcerting listening to the knuckleheads for a while but in retrospect I'm short. It beats cancer or dying and in the final analysis in order for me to have freedom of speech then Randy must have freedom of speech also.
Political correctness is a ploy by our masters to limit our speech by limiting the words we can use. By limiting our words we are limiting the concepts we can entertain. If you really want to understand this get a copy of George Orwell's "1984" and read it.
A council has banned the term "brainstorming" and replaced it with "thought showers". Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent was accused of taking political correctness to extremes after instructing staff to make the change. The move came as council chiefs feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy. Ha!
'Instead of singing “Baa baa, black sheep” as generations of children have learned to do, toddlers in Oxfordshire are being taught to sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”.
You are so cute, Randy. You look so much like your Dad and mine! I really like the new CD. As always, it gets better the more I listen to it!
Randy, Your own exegesis might not suffice. People can do anything and then rationalize or justify. Those around them may enable. Maybe you are just an angry guy, with lots of stereotypes (a common adjunct), and the "persona" you claim to adopt is really a projection.
Why anyone would be offended because Randy's song indicates they are intelligent, hard-working, successful, and the adults in the family take the responsibility to PARENT their children is utterly beyond me! Go ahead Randy, say that about me and my kids!! We can take it!! Geez Tom(September 8, 2008 3:05 PM), get a grip! No sense of humor, but worse, no perspicacity!
There's nothing wrong with the song, but it harkens back to Ice Cube's song that helped start the LA riots in 1992.
The people who contribute most to society: Engineers, Inventors, Bio-Chemists, Philosophers, Doctors, Pastors, etc. will always be attacked by the jealous bigots who are talentless.
Talent-less people tend to become tribalists - 'My race over your race', 'My country over your country'.
They engage in these immature squabbles because they lack talent and they can't contribute to society except to bash it (a'la Ice Cube).
So for Randy Newman to attack Korean parents because they're teaching their children to become hard-workers and actually 'produce' for society, it's a 'no-brainer'.
If Randy Newman made a song called 'Ghetto Parents', he would be ostracized completely from the Jewish dominated media that places a high value system on those from the Ghetto than those from another competing culture. He won't also make a song called 'Jewish Parents' for that same reason. This is why Hollywood continues to discriminate against WASPS, Asians, etc. They look at us as a threat to their tribal domination and not as a source of 'productivity'.
ESPN, Disney, Warner Bros. will always show deference to their fellow Jews (tribalism) and to those in the Ghetto (non-competitors).
This is NOT liberal, it's facism.
Right? Wrong?
My kids love this song! They are thirteen and fifteen. First time we heard it, we laughed our heads off. We took them to see Randy at the Moore in Seattle. They were 2 of 3 teens in the audience. He croaked through the old stuff and nailed the new stuff, got lost in some chords. He showed that by stopping, mid-song, and starting a stanza over again to get it right, that perfection is the enemy of the good. Great lesson for a young musician and a better show for all its flaws. Randy's helping us raise our kids right! Now my daughter (the thirteen year old) has added "Korean Parents" to her I-Pod K-Pop playlist and made all her friends listen to it. Since Harps and Angels, their grades have jumped a full grade point! We just offered to let them trade up in the parent department if they thought we weren't cutting it for them. Told them, in fact. Boom! School is great! "Korean Parents" has helped my teens see what "Mr. Sheep" showed me when I was younger: work hard, have fun and do what's right for you. BTW my daughter plays trombone and she howled when she heard in Harps and Angels hell described as "trombones, kettle drums, pitchforks and tambourines". Humor is essential to well-being. Keep crossing that line, Randy! I'm raising my kids to live in a post-race society. Tweaking any and all race-based identity (including our own quasi-Jewishness) is part of the fun.
Glenn, Randy often adopts the narrative position of an unattractive, prejudiced individual for al least part of a song. Rednecks, My Life is Good, Short People are three examples. "Short people" is not an attack on short people, but an attack on loons who think that there is something wrong with being short.
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