Cleveland update: A local radio station, the one that plays holiday music exclusively during this time of year, announced it would not be playing the holiday classic “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” You know the song, a duet between a man and a woman involving some playful banter about, but not limited to, drugging, kidnapping and the belief that when women say “No,” what they really mean is, “If you really loved me, you’d force me.” Some folks in Cleveland are upset, claiming the PC Police have struck again and destroyed yet another holiday tradition. Here’s the thing, I’m not even sure this is a holiday song. There is absolutely no mention of Christmas, Jesus, Santa or the Hallmark Channel; what’s more, it doesn’t specify it’s even winter. Pretty much it’s a song about a dude with a boner and a mommy complex who is likely agoraphobic. As for traditions, well, they’re overrated. When “Baby It’s Cold Outside” was written in 1944, women being able to vote had been a tradition less than 25 years, and 10 years later they had made so much progress that the most reliable laugh-getters on I Love Lucy were threats or outright examples of domestic violence. It wasn’t that long ago that it was a tradition to heed the wise, fatherly counsel of Bill Cosby, who, come to think of it, wore an awful lot of sweaters, didn’t he?
Carolina update: You know, a Republican is the dude who is always accusing his wife of cheating on him, always making wild accusations and saying inappropriate things to her in public and, it turns out, he’s the cheater. (Also, everyone knows he’s a racist. C’mon, he just is.) That’s what’s been going on in North Carolina with the GOP using tales of voter fraud to suppress voting and then, when that doesn’t work, suppressing voting with outright voter fraud. In a tightly contested congressional race, with less than 250 votes separating opponents, it was found that 40 percent of absentee ballots requested by African-Americans did not make it back to election officials. Compare that with a 17 percent non-return rate for white voters, and you’re absolutely in no way at all surprised. Numerous eyewitnesses say they saw Republican operatives posing as election officials taking ballots from poor, elderly black voters, in some cases saying they would fill the ballots out for them. What kind of scab of an excuse of a human being would you have to be to do that? Right. Someone let Dana Rohrabacher know of this exciting new opportunity.
Root for: Cleveland. As bad as “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is, it’s still not worse than “The Christmas Shoes,” a song about a kid leaving his dying mother’s bedside to buy her shoes so that when she gets to heaven she’ll look really hot for Jesus, because, you know, Baby, it’s cold outside.
