Something amusing happened at work two days ago. I was sitting in the electrical shop, minding my own business, being productive, when all of a sudden I got a lecture on the evils of popular music in general and Country/Western music specifically. The funny thing was, it wasn't even my own music. But a little background is obviously needed.
I don't have the most exciting job in the world; that's quite all right with me. I'm perfectly happy if I have something to keep my hands busy for 8 hours and nothing more. On this particular day, I was enjoying myself taking little bits of wire off the back of relay sockets. Extremely mindless. The enjoyment factor was increased by the fact that I got to play with a soldering iron in the process. The guy next to me was in and out, hunting up parts for the stoplight cabinet he was putting together. At the time this story occurs, he was out. He happened to have his radio tuned to one of the many local country music stations. This is not unusual. It's probably the most commonly heard radio station in the entire building.
Enter Lyle, #2 guy in the business. He's something I'm quite familiar with, a fundamentalist Christian. I tend to be one myself, upon occasion. Anyway, he happened to hear the radio, and assumed it was mine. I don't know why; the guy whose radio it was has been working here far longer than I have, and I'm sure his musical preferences are quite well known. I'm not sure which song it was. "She Don't Know She's Beautiful", I think.
So Lyle sits down, gives me a few anecdotes on his past life working at a radio station, and then proceeds to run through the usual line about modern popular music all being rubbish. How it's not realistic, and it brainwashes one, and all that. For his crowning example, he used the song that was playing then. "I heard the line 'She don't know she's beautiful'. They never make songs about 'She don't know she's smart', or 'She don't know she's strong', you know." I nodded and smiled. I really didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't my music, and so take away his joy at helping to guide me along the straight and narrow. I seem to have this knack of convincing people that I understand exactly what they're talking about. It worked quite well in this case.
And to be fair, I do know what he's talking about, or at least why he said it. I'm just not sure it's valid. It's the age-old argument over whether anything which has a little bit of untruth in it is able to have any redeeming value whatsoever. However, he picked a rather poor example to verify his argument with. It smacks very much of political correctness. You know, the whole bit about making sure everyone knows they're special. All very well and good in itself, but it tends to turn love songs into something farcical. Not that they don't tend to be already, but that's just the nature of the genre. Making them politically correct on top of everything else is just laughable.
And then there's the whole bit about somebody, who I really don't know all that well, taking it into his head to keep me walking the Good Christian Walk. It might have been slightly different had he actually been a good friend of mine. Then I would have paid attention and taken the trouble to argue with him. In this case, I just didn't think it was worth it. However, if the subject comes up again, I'm going to throw a lot of ice water on his happy little ministry of helping out little girls who can't think for themselves.
Posted by Ardith at June 24, 2003 09:26 PM