{"id":1269,"date":"2024-03-19T14:14:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T18:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wokecapital.org\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2024-03-19T14:14:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T18:14:15","slug":"a-boy-named-sue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wokecapital.org\/a-boy-named-sue\/","title":{"rendered":"A Boy Named Sue"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago<\/a>, my dad was an electrical engineering professor \u2013 with all the personality quirks that go with being an electrical engineering professor, including his \u201cquirky\u201d sense of humor.<\/p>\n

When I was thinking about him recently, I recalled a story from probably 35 or 40 years ago.\u00a0 For ages, my dad managed (and pitched for) our parish men\u2019s slow-pitch softball team.\u00a0 One spring, at the start of the season, he received a phone call from someone \u2013 a man named Lee Kathy \u2013 who wanted to join the team.\u00a0 My dad told him when and where the first practice would be and told him just to show up.<\/p>\n

At that practice, the new guy drives up, sees my dad unloading the equipment, and walks over to introduce himself.\u00a0 \u201cHi,\u201d he says, sticking out his hand, \u201cI\u2019m Kathy.\u201d\u00a0 My dad, being my dad, grabs his hand, shakes it vigorously, and says (loudly), \u201cMy name is Sue! How do you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t get the joke \u2013 which, I\u2019d imagine, is probably a LOT of you \u2013 it\u2019s a reference to the Johnny Cash song, \u201cA Boy Named Sue<\/a>,\u201d released in 1969.\u00a0 It tells the story of, well, a boy named Sue:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, my daddy left home when I was three<\/em>
\nDidn’t leave very much to my mom and me<\/em>
\nExcept this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze<\/em>
\nNow I don’t blame him ’cause he run and hid<\/em>
\nBut the meanest thing that my daddy ever did<\/em>
\nWas before he left, he went and named me Sue<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not quite halfway through the song, Sue \u2013 now a mean and angry adult \u2013 runs into his father and introduces himself much as my dad introduced himself to poor Lee Kathy:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad<\/em>
\nFrom a worn out picture that my mother had<\/em>
\nKnew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye<\/em>
\nHe was big and bent and gray and old<\/em>
\nAnd I looked at him and my blood ran cold<\/em>
\nAnd I said, “My name is Sue, how do you do?<\/em>
\nNow you gonna die”, that’s what I told him<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, as I thought about that incident and about that song, I also thought, just briefly, about how people today \u2013 people 50 years and younger, mostly \u2013 wouldn\u2019t understand the song.\u00a0 After all, it\u2019s about how a boy lives a tortured life because he\u2019s teased and abused mercilessly for having a girl\u2019s name.\u00a0 And everyone today knows that it\u2019s perfectly fine for a boy to have a girl\u2019s name.\u00a0 Heck, it\u2019s perfectly fine for a boy to wear girls\u2019 clothes or for him even to want to be<\/em> a girl (and vice versa).\u00a0 \u201cSue\u201d turns sadistic and ugly and rageful because he\u2019s associated with something allegedly \u201cfeminine,\u201d when everyone today knows that gender is a \u201cspectrum,\u201d and that we, as a society, only believe that things are masculine or feminine because the patriarchy and white privilege have convinced that they are.\u00a0 And then, of course, there\u2019s the violence.\u00a0 Sue wants to kill his dad, and they fight, and then his dad actually congratulates him for fighting well.\u00a0 Talk about your \u201ctoxic masculinity.\u201d\u00a0 The whole thing is culturally outdated and inappropriate and why the hell would any boy who is secure in his self-worth have any problem with being called Sue?<\/p>\n

\n

Well, he must’ve thought that it was quite a joke<\/em>
\nAnd I got a lot of laughs from a lots of folk<\/em>
\nSeems I had to fight my whole life through<\/em>
\nSome gal would giggle and I’d turn red<\/em>
\nAnd some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head<\/em>
\nI tell you, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue<\/em><\/p>\n

But I grew up quick and I grew up mean<\/em>
\nMy fist got hard and my wits got keener<\/em>
\nRoam from town to town to hide my shame<\/em>
\nBut I made me a vow to the moon and stars<\/em>
\nI’d search the honky tonks and bars<\/em>
\nAnd kill that man that gave me that awful name<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I say, though, I only thought that very briefly.\u00a0 Then something occurred to me: that\u2019s stupid.\u00a0 Of course<\/em> people would understand the song.\u00a0 Of course<\/em> they know why life wouldn\u2019t be easy for a boy named Sue.\u00a0 Of course<\/em> they would understand the anxiety, the teasing, and the violence inherent in the narrative.\u00a0 The song was a joke, obviously, but it was a joke that played upon natural and largely immutable human emotions.\u00a0 Everyone<\/em> would understand it.\u00a0 The world has changed a great deal in the last 55 years, but it hasn\u2019t changed that<\/em> much.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that people wouldn\u2019t pretend not to understand it or wouldn\u2019t pretend not to get the gender-distinction references or wouldn\u2019t pretend to be offended by it.\u00a0 They would.\u00a0 Heaven knows they would.\u00a0 Because that\u2019s what they do.<\/p>\n

But then, that\u2019s American politics these days in a nutshell, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Everyone pretends to believe all sorts of stupid things.<\/p>\n

No one really believes, for example, that a man can become a woman or that a woman can become a man.\u00a0 No one really believes that gender is a spectrum.\u00a0 No one really believes that genetic boys have no physical advantage over genetic girls in sports.\u00a0 No one really believes that \u201cchestfeeding\u201d is as effective and natural as breastfeeding.\u00a0 No one really believes that cross-dressing makes one a better intelligence agent<\/a>.\u00a0 No one really believes \u00a0that white people are the cause of all evil in the world or that the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian tradition is the most oppressive and hateful civilizational ethos in history.\u00a0 No one really believes that the border isn\u2019t effectively open.\u00a0 No one really believes that President Biden committed a heinous act of barbarity during his State of the Union address by referring to an illegal alien as an \u201cillegal\u201d alien.\u00a0 No one really believes Israel is an \u201capartheid state\u201d or that its treatment of Palestinians is akin to Hitler\u2019s Holocaust.\u00a0 No one really believes that the doofus with the Viking hat was trying to take over the government.\u00a0 No one really believes that the world is going to end if we don\u2019t ban SUVs by next Wednesday.\u00a0 No one really believes that electric vehicles are the solution to all man\u2019s problems.\u00a0 No one really believes that Larry Fink is gonna save the world by bullying the directors and executives of oil companies.<\/p>\n

In short, no one really believes any of the nonsense they espouse today.\u00a0 They\u2019re only pretending to believe it.\u00a0 Some pretend because they think it makes them seem smart.\u00a0 Some pretend because they think it makes them seem cool.\u00a0 Some pretend because they think it will bring them wealth and power.\u00a0 And most pretend because they\u2019re afraid not to.\u00a0 In any case, American politics today is all just hysterical performative bullsh*t.\u00a0 It is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, much doodoo about nothing.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, these are what one might call \u201cFirst World problems,\u201d which is to say that we can afford to fight about them because the basic necessities of life and the foundations of civilization are already addressed.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a civilization that spends its time and energy tearing itself apart over imaginary problems that no one believes will remain a coherent civilization for long.<\/p>\n

Moreover, our chief civilizational rivals \u2013 China, Russia, Islamism \u2013 are not, generally, dithering and fussing about alternative interpretations of reality.\u00a0 They all have their own problems, to be sure, but they just seem so much less idiotic somehow.<\/p>\n

For the record, \u201cA Boy Named Sue\u201d ends with reconciliation:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, I got all choked up and I threw down my gun<\/em>
\nI called him my pa, and he called me his son<\/em>
\nAnd I come away with a different point of view<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Would that our politics allowed for the same.\u00a0 Unfortunately, different points of view are cause for hatred and division in our tolerant and liberal society at present.<\/p>\n

Stay angry, my friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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