At the risk of being pegged as "that new guy who cares way too much about holiday music," I have a few follow-ups to last week's post.
Thanks to the encouragement he received from people who are either tone deaf or evil, Orrin Hatch is hoping to ruin other Jewish holidays in song, starting with Purim. I'm not that troubled by this, since few gentiles have any idea of what – or even when – Purim is, and all good Jews, following the dictates of the Talmud, will be too drunk to care. [The actual commandment is "to make oneself fragrant [with wine] on Purim until one cannot tell the difference between 'arur Haman' (cursed be Haman) and 'barukh Mordekhai' (blessed be Mordecai)." And if you can't tell those two statements apart, you're certainly not going to notice Orrin Hatch singing in the background.]
But Hatch isn't the only Christian with musical gifts for the Jews. Garrison Keillor has his own suggestion for a New Year's song:
Grab your loafers,
Come along if you wanna,
And we'll blow that shofar
For Rosh Hashanah"
If Ben Stiller still had his variety show I'm sure he'd be dressing up as Bruce Springsteen and belting that out to the tune of Born to Run on the very next episode. Or not, because bloggers and tweeters across the country are up in arms about this, though that may have more to do with the context surrounding those lyrics:
Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.
I'm on record as agreeing that most of the Christmas songs out there are dreck, but the chatter is not about defending the songs, but rather about defending the Jews. It's possible that Keillor actually does hate NPR listeners Jews, but I don't see it in that paragraph. Keillor's pretty much a crank in these essays, and this is a pretty tame comment compared to what he has to say about Unitarians, who have found far fewer defenders online. [It's worth noting that the Unitarian translation he objects to dates to the 1870s, which means the song is even older than Keillor is. Also, while many Unitarians are Jewish, the church does have some Christian members.]
In fact, the whole piece reads as a joke that doesn't quite work. Even more than most defense-of-Christmas screeds, Keillor's piece is muddled on exactly what the threat is or what we should be defending. Is he seriously arguing that gingerbread cookies are intrinsically connected with the birth of his savior, while a yule log and caroling are abominations that threaten the entire season? I know the man had a stroke, but he's still too sharp to actually believe that logic.
Finally, for those of you do like having songs rewritten, check out Rachel Sklar as "Lady Jew-Ga" singing Bad Shiksa. Sklar's costume is a little too demure compared to what Gaga herself wears in the video, but at least this atones for the fact that it's been almost a year since this site has had a photo of Rachel Sklar.
