You must embody a great reserve of self-abasement to be the wife of a VP nominee in the Republican Party. Easy for Mrs. Pence: she liked baking cookies. But for Usha Vance, a bit of a challenge. You get to give up your stellar career, revert to “Mrs” VP instead of Ms, act like you truly, really respect the megalomaniacal pussy-grabber at the top of the ticket, and be prepared to explain to your friends why the 1950’s was such an awesome time in American history and worth going back to and that you really, truly enjoy baking cookies and hosting teas– far more satisfying than your boring previous work litigating cases for Disney or the Regents of the University of California. And you also get to explain how your husband, who used to brag about being accepted at Yale and served on the Law Review now mocks his own alma mater and pretends to be just folk (with very, very rich friends in the Tech Industry to subsidize his career). And carefully avoid mentioning that his “military career” consisted mostly of pushing paper and taking pictures. Honorable but skimpy and no match for John McCain whom your boss derided as a loser. Watching “Mrs. Vance” on stage at the convention was dispiriting. As Roger Ebert said, commenting on the wonderful film “Junebug”, we all make our own private accommodations in life.
The Traditional
My response to this column in the NY Times by Ross Douthat.
“a mechanism to constrain sexual misbehavior that’s more effective than the traditional emphasis on monogamy and chastity.” I like how you sneaked in there the phrase “the traditional”, as if this was some kind of monumental edifice of unquestioned provenance. As if it was not a social mechanism for the control of women’s bodies by patriarchal “authority”. A social mechanism inevitably dispensed with for themselves by privileged men in power. Whether you personally or not love Donald Trump, your side owns him and you could not invent a more ragingly hypocritical avatar of “traditional” values.
Harrison Butker’s Beautiful Nobody Wife
Someone on Facebook posted this, in response to the ridiculous controversy over the speech made by football player Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs to the graduates of Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas.
Oh no, a catholic gave a pro catholic speech with catholic views to catholic students at a catholic school, the horror, the misogyny, the… idiots love to go out of their way to be offended. The same crowd that preaches acceptance cannot stand living in a world where other people aren’t like them apparently
I responded:
Agree. The same way a male state legislator with no medical training or background and expertise in psychology or physiology should not be telling parents what they can or cannot do to address a child’s issues with sexual identity. Nor should the same state politicians be telling libraries what books they can stock on their shelves. Or if people who are fearful of communicable diseases can wear a mask. Or if teachers can teach about the fundamentals of the U.S. economy before 1865. Idiots love to go out of their way to be offended.
I initially thought the entire “scandal” was just media masturbation: a trivial event and a trivial offense sparking trivial outrage and then trivial blow-back, and so on, with everyone losing sight of the utter triviality of the original event along the way. Harrison Butker is a nobody, a fucking football player, of no particular consequence, and certainly of no importance to culture or intellectual life in the U.S.
His comments were not as anodyne as his defenders would have it, nor as caustic as his critics would have it. They are just unbelievably mediocre. Seriously? In this day and age? Women should stay home and cook and clean and have babies?
He says:
On the day before Mother’s Day, he said, “I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.
I can’t think of anything more deeply insulting to Isabelle. You had no life before you met the wondrous Harrison Buttkiss? You were not a whole person, because this amazing, virile, intelligent, paragon of testosterone had not yet laid you?
He went further, attacking diversity and inclusion in general, gay marriage, and so on– the usual litany of ignorant white male grievance. He attacked abortion, which is odd because his party has left him in the dust on this issue. Have you checked with Mike Pence lately? And what other bedrock principles are you and your party eager to shed the moment they become politically inconvenient?
Shame on you Benedictine College! Not because Butkisser gave you a mind-numbing divisive grievance-laced litany of intellectual dishonesty, but because you chose an athlete of mediocre intelligence to give your graduation address. Someone who is famous for one-dimensionality, or achievements in the stupidest, dullest major sport in the world. Please– the entire secular, consumerist, celebrity-addled world worships these masters of inanity. Can’t a college — especially a Catholic Christian College– stand up and say, we will be different! We will not kowtow to the worldly vice of idolization of professional athletes and materialistic success! No, we will invite someone with real achievements in really important, consequential areas, like literature, journalism, painting, music, engineering, science, social services, or perhaps even ministry.
But then the administration of Benedictine College wouldn’t get to go home and tell their wives and mommies, “Guess I got to meet?” and really impress them.
This is who you are
I have recently read and heard from Christian apologists who assert, in one form or another, that the Evangelical Christian community that passionately supports Donald Trump actually understands that he is an unworthy person of bad taste and style who is nevertheless God’s chosen vessel to restore America to holiness and conviction and the purity of our bodily fluids.
All right– sarcasm aside, some Christians say that while they are disgusted with Trump’s personal character they support him because he appoints anti-abortion judges, stands up for gun rights, opposes same-sex marriage and homosexuality, and resists the world-wide conspiracy to replace white Americans with people of color.
In other words, they believe that a man who is a serial womanizer, a materialist, a liar, a bragger, and vulgarity incarnated somehow, when it comes to issues that matter to the Christian community, acts in a way that Jesus would approve of.
I don’t believe they really believe that. They might say they do, but the evidence is overwhelming: they don’t. Trump is the evangelical community unmasked. He is what they are. Vulgar. Grasping. Materialistic. Cruel and dishonest.
They do not see Trump as a corrupt vessel of God’s will; to them, he really is God’s chosen messenger, an avatar of all the values and beliefs that they hold dear but don’t want to publicly acknowledge, a bully and thug who they really like because he is a bully and thug. The main body of Evangelical Christians will deny that they embrace Trump the corrupt vessel because he exposes them for what they are: raging hypocrites who have demonstrated over and over again that they never did really believe in the teachings of Christ or the bible.
A political scientist at Furman University, Jim Guth:
White evangelicals share with Trump a multitude of attitudes, including his hostility toward immigrants, his Islamophobia, his racism, and nativism, as well as his “political style,” with its nasty politics and assertion of strong, solitary leadership. Indeed, Trump’s candidacy may have “authorized” for the first time the widespread expression of such attitudes.
The Evangelical Christian community has always been pro-gun. They love guns. They have always been generously forgiving of war criminals like William Calley, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten, if they are Americans. They have consistently rejected the Bible’s clear mandate to care for creation as obedient stewards, not as exploitive pirates. They preach abstinence and self-denial but indulge in every possible form of acquisitiveness of property and worship church leaders who brag about their private jets and access to political leaders. They claim to admire integrity and character but they hated the two presidents with the most integrity and character in the past 50 years, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
As they sit there in their pews, chanting and singing, reciting from scripture, and folding their hands in prayer, they know, deep in their hearts, that what they like about Trump is precisely his pettiness, his vindictiveness, his vulgarity, his bullying, his meanness, and his materialism. They do not quietly accept him and hold their noses: they bless him and admire him and scream and cheer him when he is at his most divisive and vulgar.
He is you. And he has revealed to the world the truth of what it means to be an evangelical Christian in the United States in 2024.
Nothing.
I take note of a recent confirmation of this point.
More on the issue.
By the way, in Iowa it is not considered polite to talk about rugged individualism and “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” economics and then mention corn subsidies.
Death by Discretion
I read an account of a bear attack a while ago that I found somewhat a disturbing. A young woman camping in a wilderness area of a park in Colorado had been pulled out of her sleeping bag in the middle of the night by a large grizzly and dragged away screaming while a friend of hers nearby, who was also attacked, fled for help.
Help was found and a group of people set out to find the girl, if they could, and scare away the bear, if they could. The bear did wander off leaving the badly injured girl lying on the ground. The bear had ripped all of her clothing off and inflicted several life-threatening wounds.
I read the accounts given by some of the rescuers and could not find any reference to any attempt to stop the bleeding, staunch the wounds, apply a tourniquet, or any other first aid. When recounting the story later, what they all agreed on was that someone immediately covered her up with a coat. Others returned to a nearby lodge to find equipment with which to carry her up to the lodge. After considerable time, she was brought to the lodge and a doctor there treated her wounds but it was too late and she died.
It appeared to me that the rescuers were more concerned with the propriety of looking at a young woman’s naked body than they were with saving her life. Nobody involved describes even examining her carefully to determine where the wounds were, let alone attempting to stop the bleeding. It is by no means certain but it seems possible that her life could have been saved if someone had made a serious attempt to staunch the most critical wounds.
It is quite possible that she would have died anyway.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone. Here’s an account of a man in Japan who admirably attempted to save the life of a woman by applying a defibrillator (an AED or Automated External Defibrillator) only to be labelled a pervert by a bystander. Now, I personally have wondered for years about how an AED is used– does the skin have to be bare? A surprising number of people don’t know. According to the information I found, it must be applied to bare skin, on the chest.
So if, I came across a woman suffering from a serious heart ailment and attempted to apply an AED, would someone watching would be outraged and demand that we all let her die rather than see her naked breasts?
I learned that the AED kit comes with a scissors, and yes, you absolutely should remove any clothing over the chest area, especially the bra (which may have an underwire in it).
And good luck with that. I know exactly what you will encounter. You will encounter some asshole who thinks he’s a god-almighty guardian of public safety and good order and he will forcefully demand that you wait for a nice respectable ambulance to come along and handle the emergency.
I am quite confident that people have died because of people’s delicate sense of decency and that you will never hear about it.
The Double Standard
The double-standard peaks out from behind it’s feminist camouflage.
I was thinking of Al Franken here, mostly. There is no doubt at all that if a man had performed the same rude gesture as Ellen Degeneres did, he would have been roundly condemned. If he had been a Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris would have led the charge to drive him from office.
Well, let’s hear it Senators Gillibrand and Harris! Let’s hear your full-throated outrage once again: this kind of sexual ogling and intimidation will not be tolerated! You will never, ever appear on her show. Ever.
What was Franken accused of? Posing for a picture with his hands in the air over a woman’s chest. And the other accusations, as far as I can determine, include “trying to kiss me”. Oh the horror! A man tried to kiss me! Off with his head!! Yet some feminist jihadists insisted on lumping Franken in with Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey as poster-ogres of the passing patriarchy.
Imagine a male guest on Ellen asking the hostess what she thinks of his penis? What do you think? Just a trivial thing that should be swept aside and ignored. Let’s just get on to something real, here? Or a horribly inappropriate and offensive gesture that should be sanctioned immediately with suitable consequences?
Well, here we have Gal Gadot asking Jimmy Kimmel what he thinks of her breasts. My point is not that Gal should be fired from her job because she asked Jimmy Kimmel to comment on her breasts (which she pointed to with her hands) but that neither of these incidents, nor the ones Al Franken was accused of, nor the ones that Louis C.K. was accused of, rises to the level of hysteria with which Franken’s alleged offenses were greeted by the “outraged” harpies who demanded his resignation.
I am most disgusted with Kirsten Gillibrand. It was widely discussed at the time that Gillibrand was looking for Franken’s scalp as an entree into the world of 2020 presidential candidates.
And so it was. Guess whose running for president in 2020?
I didn’t hear as much speculation then about Kamala Harris’ motives. But guess who else is running for president in 2020?
A pox on both their houses.
When asked what type of man she likes, Rihanna said: “I like men who are more aggressive, but mysterious. I like them to be sure of themselves and know that you’re the man, I’m the lady, and the only way for us to make this work is if we play our roles.
I’m not sure that a man who heeded the call here would not be worried that after being “aggressive” he would be accused of not obtaining enthusiastic consent. Is it possible to have both?
“It’s no problem at all for a man to wear a dark blue suit a hundred days in a row,” she said, “but if I wear the same blazer four times within two weeks, the letters start pouring in.” Angela Merkel
I have no doubt that most, if not all, of those letters (do they really still send letters in Germany?) come from women. We have seen similar reactions to women newscasters who change their hairstyle. So why do some feminists keep blaming men for the double-standard applied to women in politics? Why are you outraged at us? Why aren’t you working on your own constituency, who publicly ogle breasts, yearn for “aggressive” men, and complain about the way you dress and look?
When I was in college, years and years ago, I was asked by a couple of girls– good friends to each other– to take their portrait together. They tried various poses, and dressing in similar t-shirts, and sweaters, and tank-tops. Then I half-jokingly suggested they pose nude, back to back. I remembered a similar picture of the two women in the band Heart. I thought it looked strikingly beautiful. The two girls looked at me thoughtfully and considered it and I was quite sure they were ready to go when I quipped, “and without makeup”. They immediately, decisively rejected that option. They were horrified at the very thought.
I’ve thought about that lot, for years. I– the male– was the one who thought they would look more beautiful with their flaws, with a more natural image of their faces, with their real pores and real eyes and real lips.
Would a good feminist argue that they only think that way because they have been brainwashed by men to think that? I don’t believe it.
The Grievance Aesthetic: The Fannys
First of all, I had never before heard of Fanny. Fanny was an all-female band that formed in 1970, consisting of June Millington (electric guitar), Jean Millington (bass), Alice De Buhr, and Nickey Barclay. The women were remarkably talented– no doubt about it: they could play.
I have been following music closely since I started listening to Bob Dylan when I was ten years old. I have followed it closely throughout the last 55 years. I never heard of Fanny that I can remember. After listening to their songs, I feel apologetic. I feel dispossessed.
Come on– they are absolutely fabulous.
Let me be clear: hard rock is not my preferred style. I find it abrasive, noisy, sometimes propulsive, sometimes dull. I crave good lyrics, the use of musical space, nuance, and subtlety. I don’t have a single hard rock song on my personal list of the top 25 songs of all time, though I suppose Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” or “Backstreets” or “Adam Raised a Cain” might qualify at least as “hard edged” rock.
I recently watched a documentary on PBS, “Fanny: The Right to Rock”. To my utter disbelief, this variation of the film is clumsily censored, words beeped out, images of breasts blurred out. Fuck you, whoever did that. I found a good copy elsewhere.
If I had been in charge of this project there is one thing I would have asserted right from the start as absolutely essential to the objective of this film: at no point should the esteem or lack thereof of their music be attributed to sexist, patriarchal oppression, sexism, and discrimination. The fact that Janis Joplin did succeed where Fanny did not tells you that there was more to it than sexism. And to be fair, the members of the band on the record in the documentary don’t belabor the point.
[Incidentally: it’s a product of BBC IV and if you can find the original BBC version, you can avoid the contemptible censorship savaged on the PBS version, notably including scenes of the girls frolicking half-naked in Hedy Lamar’s former house in Los Angeles.]
But why? Isn’t that the essential story of the band? Well, if it is, the band is not worthy of this tribute. If the band should be known to you because they broke barriers and because they were really better than anyone thinks they were because their singular lack of popular and critical success is due not to any deficiency of talent but to the obstacles placed in their path by sexist (and racist — they were Philippine) attitudes, then you have to prove it by providing me with the songs and musical achievements that deserved more recognition than they got.
What you should want more than anything– what you should positively crave– is for viewers to be convinced that Fanny produced some extraordinary music that stands on its own merits without qualification. That, this documentary failed to do. To declare that their work was important or significant because they were women is defeatist. It is to admit that their work really wasn’t good enough to earn distinction on its own.
They should instead insist on their music being heard on its own terms: very, very good hard rock. Four very good musicians creating respectable, admirable songs. In particular, Jean Millington’s vocals are probably as good or better than Janis Joplins’– and she could play bass — really play– to boot.
Jean Millington later said that Fanny had to have a strong live presence in order to overcome audience’s perceptions that women could not play rock music well. Wiki
Well, we don’t really know. Do audiences really sit there and think, oh, I think they sound pretty good but they’re female so they can’t be as good as they sound? Or do audiences simply sit there and think, “they don’t sound that great” and it’s the band and the feminists who think it’s because of their gender? I am at a loss. Listen to them: how could an audience not be impressed?
They didn’t “break through” into real success. To do that, you absolutely have to have at least one song that really amazes people, that demonstrates originality and style and inventiveness and a compelling melody or vocal or all of the above. A “More Than as Feeling” or “We Don’t Need no Education” or “Eighteen” or “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” or, crossing genres, “Have You Never Been Mellow” or “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be” or “Anchorage” or “First We Take Manhattan” or, even better, “The Hammond Song” by the Roches, a female group (in folk) that really did stand out for the quality of their music– not because they were female. Fanny had many very good songs, but I can’t identify one that could have crossed-over into a pop hit. But then, there were so many crappy pop hits. And, of course, the promotional efforts of the record industry plays a big role. They did have notable TV appearances, so you can’t say they didn’t get anything. Just not enough.
What were they aspiring to? Pop success? They say they just wanted to be known for their talent, not their looks, but it was clear that they were not really good enough to be successful for their brilliant artistic achievements like, say, The Band or Steely Dan. The bands that cite them as an inspiration, the Go-Gos, the Bangles, and the Runaways, were also pop bands with more success at creating the catchy pop single. None of them were as good, from a purely musical perspective, as the Roches.
David Bowie’s appreciation of the band is frequently quoted: “They were extraordinary: they wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers”. Yeah, well, David Bowie was dating Jean Millington in 1973. He was being asked to judge his girl. But, okay, he was actually right.
Like almost all musicians, they were cruelly ripped off by their own management and the record companies. But that is at least partly due to their own ignorance. They allowed their producer and the record company to fire Brie Brandt because they wanted them to resemble the Beatles. Seriously? Because they had four members? The rest of the band was very sad about cutting Brie out of the band, but it did not seem to occur to them that there is a universe in which young musicians can decide personnel matters for themselves. It was as if God told them to fire her and they did. They talk about it as if there really was no choice, because they don’t want to admit that the choice was between Brie and the commercial backing of the label.
There are bands that refused to compromise on issues like that and still found success. There are probably even more bands that made the same compromise and, like Fanny, went nowhere.
The inevitable reunion is covered. Nickey Barclay is mysteriously absent. There is a clip of them performing live which is conspicuously deceitful: it’s the studio recording playing over the video of the band. Not all viewers are dumb enough to not ask themselves immediately why they don’t play the live audio.
The broadcast version I saw beeped out “offensive” language. Seriously? It’s 2023. You’re doing a documentary on this courageous, ground-breaking, revolutionary, ballsy female band, and you have to careful not to offend the delicate sensibilities of your projected audience? [As I mentioned earlier, check out the BBC original if you can.]
The Candidates:
Aint That Peculiar
Fairly upbeat love song (the more you hurt me the more I love you). Slide electric, pretty good bass. Not bad, but not particularly distinguished.
Blind Alley
Typical Fanny: extremely busy, dense, vocals typical of thrash metal bands– like, have you ever heard of space? Vocals are “stretching”, a habit developed by metal bands from trying to be heard above their own noise.
Last Night I had a Dream
All the lousy little poets coming round trying to sound like Janis Joplin…
Place in the Country
Nicky Barclay sounds more than a little derivative of Janis Joplin (did Joplin cop a few strokes from Barclay? They are active around the same time), but without the variety of tone and pace.
Bach’s 13 Mistakes
“Tar” is a bit long-winded but still the best movie I’ve seen this year. Blanchett will win the Oscar. I am absolutely fabulously overjoyed that they filmed and recorded the orchestral scenes with a real orchestra, live; Blanchett’s piano playing is also real, as is the cellist ingenue. Most films about musicians dub the performances and it usually shows, badly. Contains a provocative, timely discussion by the lead character of the relationship of art to the scandalous behaviors of the artists, instancing a LGBQ student who can’t get “into” Bach’s music because he had 13 children.
False Statements and Superfluous Details
It is always fascinating to read about a very old mystery that is finally solved.
In 1984, a twelve-year-old girl, Jonelle Matthews, disappeared from her home in Greely, Colorado. Police say they have been “haunted” by the case since then. Last week, the mystery was “solved”. A man named Steve Pankey was convicted of her kidnapping and murder.
Wow! DNA evidence, right? Fingerprints? A witness? A confession?
Well, we now know better than to trust confessions.
The evidence, as far as can be determined from the news article in the New York Times and Wiki, consists mostly of Pankey making “odd” comments about the case, showing an “unusual” interest in it, and … well, read about it. It’s get weirder and weirder. Apparently, Pankey, who is divorced, and whose wife seems to have provided police with some of the evidence of Pankey’s “odd” interest in the case, admits to being a celibate homosexual, even while he served as an assistant pastor at his church.
His wife, apparently, does not remember that his alibi– that he was with her the night of the kidnapping– was a lie. She was there with him, just a few nights before they left for a trip to California. The car was already partly packed. Would she not remember if he had been out that evening, if she remembers that he listened to radio accounts with suspiciously strong curiosity, or that he asked her to read newspaper accounts of the story aloud to him after they arrived home?
Jonelle’s body was found in 2019 by a construction crew working on a pipeline. There is no DNA evidence, no finger-prints, no photos, no witnesses. There is, in short, nothing but a rather bizarre interpretation of some odd but not really strange verbal expressions by the suspect.
This is not the first time some odd person has made curious statements about an unsolved murder. We should know better by now: it’s a psychological condition, a personality quirk, a bizarre compulsion. If a person behaves “oddly”, by all means, check it out. But if there is no supporting evidence, you probably have something similar to this case.
Ask yourself this: would the police have ever excluded a possible suspect because he didn’t provide “superfluous details” when discussing the case with them?
But to bring a case like that to court, based sole on the “superfluous” detail or “excessive” interest is worse than inadequate. It borders on criminal abuse. Close enough! Hang him! Great police work! Medals for everybody.
And Jonelle’s family is glad to have “closure”. If I were in Jonelle’s family, I would tell the police, “are you fucking kidding me?” Get back to work.
This is all absurd. It’s idiotic. And, as if we don’t already know from election-deniers, it is further evidence that a lot of people are, frankly, stupid: a jury voted unanimously that, by golly, if the police think he’s guilty, he must be guilty. They convicted him.
Pankey insists he is innocent. He says he is being persecuted because of his homosexuality. He might be right.
I love the “superfluous details”. The police felt that the “superfluous details” implicated him. Because there is some kind of magical police science that tells you that men who provide “superfluous details” likely committed a crime. Just as, when I was little, my mother believed that giggling if someone stared at you and asked if you were lying meant that you were lying.
I know people who put on a grave, serious expression when talking about police who were killed or injured on duty, as if there is something solemn or sacred about them. It is very hard, especially recently, especially after the numerous incidents in which police behaved very, very badly (even to the point of homicide) and not one of the officers who saw or heard of the incident reported it, to not believe that most police don’t deserve our respect.
Interesting side-note: Jonelle was born to a 13-year-old girl, and then adopted.
“A chokecherry tree was planted in front of Franklin Middle School in memory of Jonelle. The tree died after a few years and a plaque inscribed with Jonelle’s name disappeared.[18]” (Wiki) So much for that solemn commitment to commemorate and honor her memory. I guess it was a superfluous detail.
We Hum Along to Infidelity
There is a video of a group of children performing the song “Gentle on My Mind” in this cheerful, anodyne style that makes you sit back and think, oh, how wonderful that he (the songwriter) has such warm thoughts about his girl. She must be so pleased that he’s thinking about her after he stayed a few nights and then ran off.
Have you ever hummed along to it?
Have you ever taken note of the lyrics:
And it’s knowing I’m not shackled
By forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that are dried upon some line
There are many strange paradoxes in popular culture: our contempt for men who “love ’em and leave ’em” for their cruelty and selfishness, and our worship of songs like “Baby the Rain Must Fall” and “Gentle on my Mind”. Our cancel culture, about men who cheat. Our public disapproval of philanderers. But most people still hum along, as they do with a song about killing an unfaithful wife (“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town”).
“Gentle on my Mind” is pretty poetic about it:
I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin’
Cracklin’ caldron in some train yard
My beard a rustling, cold towel, and
A dirty hat pulled low across my face
This gets kind of weird. Not only is he dumping her– like Gordon Lightfoot in “For Lovin’ Me”, but he’s wandering around like a hobo, not working, evidently, and surviving on soup with his fellow derelicts in “some train yard”. Quite a picture for his beloved, while she’s warming to the idea of being “gentle on his mind”.
So the gentle part means she isn’t going to put up a fuss about him dropping in for sex now and then, leaving his sleeping bag behind her couch, and then taking off whenever he feels like it.
Elvis Presley recorded it. So did Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. But, Aretha Franklin?! Yes, she did. Well, that’s liberating!
John Hartford wrote the song, he says, after watching “Dr. Zhivago”. And from personal experience.
Maybe I misunderstand the lyrics. Maybe the poor guy had no choice but to move on and eat soup in the train yard. But it doesn’t sound like it:
Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us
And some other woman’s cryin’ to her mother
‘Cause she turned and I was gone
Who’s right? Well, let’s expand it a little. Let’s consider Hartford’s wife.
The story of the song narrates the reminiscences of a drifter of his lost love, while moving through backroads and hobo encampments.[2] Betty Hartford, who later divorced her husband, noted to him the similarity between herself and the song’s female character. She questioned John Hartford about the man’s negative feelings toward his marriage. Hartford said he likened her to Lara and attributed the man’s feelings about being trapped in a relationship to his “artistic license”.
There you go.
It was, at one time, one of the most played songs (in all versions) on radio in North America.
Men thinking kindly — or not– about the women they abandoned