Redstate

(No one knows what the Rude Boy knows.)

By Mark Kilmer Posted in 2008 — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Exclamation: "Lefty bloggers these days." That should be followed by a heavy sigh, especially after they've tried to play gotcha without a clue. Comparing the music of The Clash to that of Billy Joel would make a decent popular music critic cringe, but that's not e'en a fragment of the idiocy afoot here.

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Do you recall in '00, when Hillary held a rally at which was blared the song Captain Jack, by American pop star Billy Joel?

Just before First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton took the stage to announce her candidacy for New York's U.S. Senate seat on Sunday (Feb. 6) afternoon, Billy Joel 's "Captain Jack" played from the speakers at the State University of New York at Purchase. Since the song contains explicit lyrics, Clinton's detractors jumped on her campaign's choice of music on Monday (Feb. 7).

Apparently, the campaign sound system was playing Joel's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 , with the intention of highlighting his song "New York State Of Mind," but the affair was running late and the disc played on. Immediately prior to Clinton's entrance, "Captain Jack" was played to a national audience watching the event on news channels such as CNN and C-Span.

Among the lyrics of the song are the lines…

I will not post the crude and lame lyrics to that song on this blog, but if you're in a state of mind conducive to off-putting prurience, find 'em here.

To make the situation that much more ironic, Clinton said during her speech, "I've heard parents' concerns about the media's influence on their children. How to protect our children from the influence of a popular culture...?"

Ouch. That was a mistake, and one worthy of comment. Her temporary-opponent for that Senate seat, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had his say:

New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- an undeclared but probable New York Republican U.S. Senate candidate -- quickly launched an attack on the Clinton campaign's mistake, telling a press conference to see the report of the mistake on the often controversial Internet news site, The Drudge Report. "There's either one of two explanations -- that in this highly scripted event, this was scripted, or in this highly scripted event, this was a mistake," he said. "The second one may actually be the more powerful of the two messages. It means that people of that thinking and of that ideology are around you, and therefore messages like this get out."

The deals withthe stoned life of a deadbeat. My image at the time was of some Hillary staffer giggling and thinking it would be funny to play this dross at a political rally, but I don't know the truth about the miscue. And I don't care.

Enter young Richard Perez-Pena, a blogger with the NYT's dot-com. He sneers that Hillary's little campaign song is "a scene enshrined in the memories of New York political reporters as among the most hilarious they’ve witnessed," and now he feels he can enact revenge on Rudy Giuliani. (Gotcha.)

You see, Rudy had the temerity to play Rudie Can't Fail, by the British punk band The Clash, a seminal British punk band which the blogger ignorantly dismisses as merely a "punk band that smashed guitars and sang about riots." He doesn't know The Clash, often referred to as "the only band that matters," and characterizes them in America pop terms. They were part of a British youth movement – naively idealistic, distraught, and sharply political – and the fact that they were knee-jerk socialists ought to have given Rudy more pause than the content of the song.

For his gotcha, the blogger picked a few lines from the song, which he proclaims is about a "jobless good-for-nothing":

“How you get a rude and a reckless?
Don’t you be so crude and a feckless
You been drinking brew for breakfast

The song actually deals with a "Rude Boy," and there is a nice explanation of that over at… brace yourselves… Wikipedia:

The rudeboy culture originated in the ghettos of Kingston [Jamaica], coinciding with the popular rise of rocksteady music, dancehall celebrations and sound system dances. Disaffected unemployed urban youths sometimes found temporary employment from sound system operators to disrupt competitors' dances (leading to the term dancehall crasher). This — and other street violence — became an integral part of rudeboy lifestyle, and often gave rise to gangs.

Many of these rudies started wearing sharp suits, thin ties, and pork-pie or Trilby hats, inspired by United States gangster movies and soul music groups. With growing emigration in the late 1960s, the rude boy culture and its music, ska and rocksteady, spread to the United Kingdom and other countries.

A rude boy is tough, streetwise, and fashion conscious to a fault. But Giuliani did not choose the song for its statement; rather, his campaign selected it because its refrain expresses confidence in their candidate. (Sounds like: "Rudy can't fail.")

Let's observe the complete lyrics to the song Rudie Can't Fail, by The Clash:

We hear them sayin'
How you get a rude and a-reckless?
Don't you be so crude and a feckless
You been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can't fail, no, no

So we reply
I know that my life make you nervous
But I tell you that I can't live in service
Like the doctor was born for a purpose
Rudie can't fail

Okay, I went to the market to realize my soul
Cos what I need I just don’t have, oh no
First they cursed then they pressed me ‘till I hurt
We say Rudie can’t fail

Woah, first you must cure your temper
Then you find a job in a paper
You need someone for a savior
Then Rudie can't fail, oh no

We reply
Now we get a rude and a reckless
We been seen lookin' cool an' a speckless
We been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can't fail oh, no, no

I went to the market to realise my soul
Cos what I need I just don’t have – ah!
First they cursed then they pressed me ‘till I hurt
Saying Rudie can’t fail

Okay! okay
So where you wanna go today?
Hey boss man! Hup-yeah
You're looking pretty smart
In your chicken skin suit
With your chicken

You think you're pretty hot
In the pork pie hard
In your pork pie hat
Look out, look out...
Sky juice!...10 cents a bottle!
But...Rudie can't fail

The song was not about riots and smashing guitars, as the blogger claimed; it was a disaffected young person, cool and tough. Hillary's Captain Jack, on the other hand, was about a stoned loser with a lost outlook

Why did Rudy Giuliani use this song? Again, it wasn't to describe the exploits of a Jamaican punk, of course; rather, the refrain worked: "Rudy can't fail!" When I had heard that Rudy might run, the song came to mind as something he might use on the campaign trail. For what it is worth, I concluded that Rudy ought to use Rudie.

Hillary's song, Captain Jack, is full of offensive imagery to make no points about her campaign. The song was just filler, killing time before she arrived on stage to cackle. It sent an ugly message, one which seems to tell young people that life is a series of incomplete highs and that's okay.

Mr. Perez-Pena ought to have done his homework before mouthing off. (I hope he wasn't trying to be clever.) Hillary's song told us something about her campaign. The Giuliani campaign used an anthem which told us that he can't fail.

(For the record, I do not now support Rudy Giuliani, although I heard Sean Hannity's interview this afternoon…. I'm listening to Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. Op 46, as I type.)