In 1972, Marlo Thomas, the American actress and social activist, released a children's book Free to Be...You and Me, which became an album and this made for television movie.
The project challenged gender stereotypes, it encouraged tolerance, and its basic message was that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve ANYTHING.
But now Thomas says that message doesn't mean anything anymore because too many children are being bullied to death.
There was a time when the words "Free to Be" embodied a hope that whatever a kid was, was good enough. But "freedom" doesn't describe the world of this generation. Or of their parents. One of those parents wrote to me on my Facebook page.
"Hi, Marlo," wrote Kevin Jacobsen of New York. "Our son Kameron was bullied relentlessly and committed suicide on January 18th. He was 14. In lieu of flowers, we asked for donations to go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, my mom's favorite for decades. I know you're busy, but just wondering if you could take a look at our son. We have nothing else to lose."
For all the walls we thought we'd broken down with Free to Be -- and all the stereotypes we thought we'd shattered -- children today are not free to be anything they want to be, nor anything they are, and they are dying for it. And no beautiful lyric can fix that.
Which makes me think what part of bullied, or shattered, or dead, don't these religious bigots understand?
And thank goodness for decent straight people like Marlo Thomas.
And Ben Cohen...
I have to admit that Ben Cohen could probably convince me the earth was flat eh?
Let's hope he can work his magic on the bullies and the homophobes.
Because free to be should be the right of every child.
And the bullied children of this world need all the help they can get...
“A slushie drink is one thing — it stains your clothes and hurts your pride — but when it escalates to chunks of ice, that’s dangerous,” he said.
The “slushie facial” is a popular form of bullying on the musical TV series Glee. Winsor is relieved the frozen Coke beverages missed his face, but his red Canada goose coat was soaked. Winsor ran into a friend a few minutes after the slushie attack who’d been targeted with ice and been called ‘faggot.’
Would you:
(1) Lick the slushie off your clothes and face, and thank your attackers for making you feel famous?
(2) Apologize for ruining a perfectly good slushie, and offer to buy them another?
(3) Or kick them in the head, until they choke in their own sweetness?
"[He] beat him to where he had bruises and cuts over most of his body," said Hill. "The male begged for mercy as he was being beaten, but it didn't really seem to help and eventually Terry left the male laying in the snow just in his swim shorts, essentially unconscious."
At a time when the government of Saskatchewan is trying to accomodate marriage commissioners who refuse to marry gay people because their Monkey God doesn't allow it.
Instead of firing their bigot asses.
At a time when an Ontario school board compares the Gay-Straight Alliance to a Nazi group. Even though bullying in Canada is a huge and shameful problem.
•85 per cent of LGBTQ students reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
•40 per cent reported being physically harassed.
•19 per cent reported being physically assaulted
•Compared to Canada, fewer of the American students, 61 per cent, reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation.
Even worse than America.
At a time when Vancouver is the gay bashing capital of Canada. Gay people are being assaulted all over Canada. Or having their homes torched.
At a time when Stephen Harper and his Cons are preparing to strangle us ALL.
What's the most fevered cry in the progressive blogosphere? Solidarity forever? Down with the tyrant?
Look I respect the views of my progressive brothers and sisters, even when I disagree with them. Even when they just don't get it.
But why are so many white straight people sooooooo indignant when they've never felt the sting of those words? Or the murderous violence that so often comes with them.
What part of the hate that kills don't they understand?
What about the gay kids who hear the faggot word all the time?
Why did so many make it a bigger deal than even the Blogging Tories did? Why are they sooooooo indignant?
Since when did they become the sacred guardians of the "N" word? Since when did repeating the "F" word so gleefully, over and over again, become a progressive thing?
Nigger.Nigger. Nigger. Faggot. Faggot. Faggot.
Those heroes and their brave act of defiance. Their sacred satire. Our bloody lives.
Oh well. I thought progressives put people before art. Or a word in a lousy song.
When I was at work today, I couldn't help noticing how the CBC was playing this very small story.
Over and over again. As if it was the biggest story in the world, and faggot wasn't an "offensive word."
And they weren't the only ones.
The decision nabbed international headlines (with Fox News and TV Guide among the U.S. websites to pick up on the story) and prompted furious debate on Twitter, where "Dire Straits" and "CBSC" were both trending topics in Canada.
So you can imagine how I felt when I came home and discovered that even on Progressive Bloggers, it was a feverishgangbang.
Gawd. Some old straight guys just don't get it.
So for the record..."Money For Nothing" is NOT banned in Canada. Radio stations are only being asked to play the newer version, which the band has included on at least three albums.
Nothing stops anyone from buying the original version, playing it at home, and shouting faggot all they like. If that's what turns them on.
But let's not pretend that replacing the word "faggot" with "mother" changes the context.
One sanitized version of Money For nothing replaces "faggot" with mother, another bleeps the epithet entirely, so that "See the little faggot with the earrings and the makeup," becomes "See the little (bleep) in the earrings and makeup." Seems to me that the context is still there. We know the character is deriding those 80s rockers with the big hair for their apparently feminine ways.
Or that the so-called satire wasn't an epic fail, as Mark Knopfler, who is no Mark Twain, reluctantly seems to recognize.
Apart from the fact that there are stupid gay people as well as stupid other people, it suggests that maybe you can't let it have so many meanings - you have to be direct. In fact, I'm still in two minds as to whether it's a good idea to write songs that aren't in the first person, to take on other characters.
And the original version shouldn't be played on the public airwaves because gay people don't like to hear the faggot word. They hear it enough.
And it's KILLING gay kids...
"I think it's extremely important to take these words out of lyrics in popular culture," said Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, an organization that promotes equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-identified people.
Oh boy. What can you say when not ONE of all the MSM stories and blog posts I read today saw fit to mention the plight of bullied gay kids?
What can you say about this feverish gang bang over the "right" to use the word faggot? Even in the so-called progressive blogosphere. Even if it hurts gay people.
What can you say about all those old straight guys who still don't get it?
Except, I hate BULLIES.
Like a kidney stone, or a stubborn stool, everything PASSES.
And of course, for all those fighting so hysterically for the "right" to say sing FAGGOT.
