"Baby, It's Cold Outside"

Love the Holidays! 

One reason that I love the holiday season is for the cultural clashes that surface. Some are more significant than others. My pal, Patricia Dalton Fennell, has produced and does vocals on Chris Pasin’s new holiday album – “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Therefore, this controversy is on my radar.

Read reviews HERE

In an interview by HLN-CNN, Carol Costello was clearly looking for a hot button to use regarding the storm blowing around the holiday classic song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

The song is a beautiful romantic conversation involving a call-and-response duet with the “cold outside” excuse to prolong the lover’s cuddle. Somehow, early in our 21^st century, the “politically correct” police began to allege that the song is sort of a date-rape anthem.

This may be somewhat of a stretch.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was composed in 1944 by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying). It was first recorded in 1948 and used in the 1949 film, Neptune’s Daughter, a romantic comedy starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat and Mel Blanc. The film was very successful and has been nominated to be one of the American Film Institute’s best musical movies. The song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The context of the World War II era and the immediate post-war years might be thought, in retrospect by some, to be “innocent” but I think not. We were involved in the second world war of the century when the song was written and, in the late ‘40s, the film industry was fairly conservative in matters regarding sex due to the restrictions place upon it by the Hays Code.  In fact, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was a replacement for Loesser’s “Slow Boat to China” which was thought inappropriate by the Hays Office.

Projecting our values backwards in time is difficult. There is no denying that the male "caveman" and his romantic methods were crude and abusive. The evolution of male-female relationships has been slow, and sensitivity has always been overpowered by impulse and raw emotion. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent, rational and civilized. But, history has proven that we are not necessarily as advanced as we often think.

My conclusion is that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is both humorous and romantic. The notion of “date rape” is symptomatic of a glass half-empty. Sure, it can be superficially viewed as date rape, but that requires some analytical assumptions that are based on conjecture rather than solid evidence.

The popularity of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with artists of today is due to the idyllic nature of romance. There is a very polite interaction going on. Perhaps, that is what is so romantic about it. 

My pal, Patricia, is a thoughtful woman. She not only has a beautiful voice and vocal style, she is no stranger to the issue of sexual misconduct, having provided assessment and treatment for sex offenders, victims, and families in situations involving incest, assault, and school-based sex crimes.

Here are some performances of the song, give a listen and decide how you feel about it.

 

The album Baby, It’s Cold Outside, recorded by Chris Pasin and Friends, is at No. 45 and is this week’s “biggest gainer” on the Jazzweek jazz chart.

See also Stephen Leon's article on Patricia Dalton Fennel's blog, "Live, Care, Create"

Donald Trump is Our President-Elect – Now Stop Whining!

Donald Trump will be our President! We need to learn to accept this because he has been elected democratically by a system that is defined in the Constitution. 

Back in July, Michael Moore published an article warning that Donald Trump would be our next President. Many of us take Mr. Moore only half seriously. He doesn't fit our image of what an "expert" might be, could be, or should be.

I had been making a similar argument for some time and my friends didn't seem to accept the argument. I really didn’t like their position any better. 

It has been much too easy to express our outrage with Donald Trump and think that he is such a nutcase, such a buffoon, such a fool that there could be no way that the American people would vote for him. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had over the years with educated, smart people who were privileged to have access to many great books filled with intelligent ideas and written by authors who, like them, had very little experience with working class middle Americans who are sandwiched between our glorious coastlines.

Not being charismatic, I have gotten used to not being listened to, and I don’t talk to enough people anyway to make a difference. Michael Moore, on the other hand, has a much larger sphere of influence and guess what – most did not hear his warning either. The fact is that, even if people would have heard the warning, they would not understand it. Bernie Sanders might also be mentioned here.

Chris Offutt's essay in the November edition of Harper's Magazine offers a helpful insight into some of how many American's might think. While Offutt's opinion does exhibit his bias against Donald Trump, it is essential that we learn how others might see the the very same world and understand elements of our culture that we might not consider in the same manner.

Elections have become incredibly ugly in this country, and we are quite sick of listening to all the crap. We want to sink our heads into the nearest hole to avoid it. Donald Trump, very wisely, just kept pressing the hot buttons of Democrats and they, in turn, responded with their high and mighty, righteous, intelligent disdain. Common conservative folk reacted to this and rebelled – they mustered the energy to show up at the polls hoping to bring about change – any change. They might even be willing to see what Trump can come up with after the dust (dirt) raised in the campaign has a chance to settle. Is Donald Trump as crazy as he seems, or might there be some light beneath the bluster he used to successfully win this election? 

Hillary Clinton could not help but to be seen, in contrast to Donald Trump, as a representative of the status quo. I do not think that it is the fact that she is a woman that has stopped her ascent to the Presidency. Of course, I realize that I may be wrong on this (but hope not). This is too easily be an excuse to avoid being more introspective about our understanding of the society that we live in. Democrats are now going to have to find a way to conceptualize their faults, quit thinking that their occupation of “higher ground” entitles them to have things their way – especially since nobody really understands the complete picture and how the elements fit into some useful perspective. They need to focus their attention and energy on a positive and all inclusive approach (not just political targets such as Hispanics, African Americans, and the "poor". 

Perhaps the real solution to this problem is that we need campaign finance reform. The economic boom that is experienced by the media in terms of advertising revenue, and all the money floating around campaigns and politicians has corrupted the election process immensely. It needs to stop! There needs to be a very low, and very hard ceiling on campaign spending. Candidates need to be forced to be economical in communicating their platforms so that they cannot afford wasteful, meaningless babble (too often just bullshit or lies anyway). The media needs to take more seriously their responsibility to report on who the candidates are, what they represent, and report that information both deeply and honestly (oh sure, and how is that going to happen?). 

The American people need to realize that their inflated egos, laziness, mean spiritedness, and general stupidity will not fix itself. We need to stop thinking that it is someone else that is wrong. We need to open up our minds and participate in a dialogue that does not involve an attitude of narrowly defined right and wrong. We need to learn to respect those who think differently in order to earn their respect. We have to learn to compromise with one another before we can expect our political representatives and leadership to do so. We need to lead from the ground up – our representatives need to be made to realize that their privilege to lead depends on their constituents (not the other way around) – thus, they might lead their peers in the legislature (that's what leadership is all about).

Just who do we think we are?

In the news today are stories dealing with slavery and health. Millions of people worldwide are affected while here in the United States we go about our business as if none of this happens. Our daily conversation is about tv shows, beach reading, and Caitlyn Jenner. We’re concerned about our children’s self-esteem, an odd array of issues that might have some negative impact upon the highly controlled comfort of our daily existence.

Today, however, it is big news that a new treatment for malaria will finally be available. This new vaccine has been in development for 30 years and will have a relatively small effect on the containment of the disease.  But, we lose a half a million lives to malaria each year. Those are lives just as important as our own,  just as valuable as our own,  just as significant as our own – but not as privileged as our own. Most of those lives are lost in Africa, most are not important consumers of the goods and services that enrich the better educated, wealthier, and luckier societies on this planet.

At the same time, we continue to struggle with other quite dramatic issues of inequality. Human trafficking is another topic that is reported on daily. It’s a $9 billion a year industry with about 27 million living in slavery around the world today. It’s a hundred and fifty years since slavery was legally outlawed in this country, but we haven’t figured out how to totally resolve issues of racial prejudice.

Our so-called advanced civilization is capable of all sorts of creative and imaginative endeavors. We have space travel, ubiquitous digital technology, fine arts, literacy and health standards (sort of) and many other measures to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. We have God on our side to justify our opinions and outlook. But, we cannot find a way to live in a way that respects our fellow human beings.

Our luck in having been born in the right place, in the right family, with the right opportunities, and the right privilege does not give us the right to ignore and disdain those who find themselves trapped by geography and political history.