the most amazingly fucked-up thing just happened this morning

[click image]

... and it is of a character that is the essence of why I admire Marianne Faithfull's version of Working Class Hero so much. It isn't in the words, or even in the music really... it's a convergence of her arrangement of it and that particular band and her history and that song's history... it calls up the harm of human disregard... it is in some ways more powerful than the perfection of John's delivery, and today is the day my posting it here again the other night for consideration presaged.

Some of it's sort of in the lyrics. Take out the whining and leave in these lines, and the message is clearer:

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
Keep you doped with religion and sex and tv
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

I have to go see if I can't figure out how to deal with this train wreck.... Back after a little while....