My Grandmother Would Be Mad...

...if she only knew what was happening right now to her beloved Kate Smith.

Yes, my grandmother loved Kate Smith back in the day.  And there weren't many singers that she found acceptable.

Well, to enjoy Kate Smith today is now something akin to burning a cross on your front lawn while wearing a white hood.  Thirty-three years after her death, she is officially persona non grata.   A villain.   A horrible person.  A blight on society.

You see, back in the thirties, Miss Smith had the misfortune of recording some records with offensive lyrics.   One tune was something called "Pickaninny Heaven."  It apparently was a big hit on the radio.   Okay, looking at the lyrics, you could pretty much assume they would never be written in 2019.

Little pickaninnies listen to the tale of a place that I know
It's twice as high as the moon
You get there in a balloon

Haven't you been told of the place where the good little pickaninnies go?
I've just been there so I ought to know
Great big watermelons roll around and get in your way
In the pickaninny heaven

Luscious pork chop bushes growin' right outside your doorway
In the pickaninnies' heaven
I've heart that they've even got a Swannee River made of real lemonade
And though the good lord took your mammy
She'll be waiting for you In the pickaninny heaven
Heaven
Heaven

They eat the windows and doors
They eat the ceilings and floors
Every kind of pet from a big teddy bear to a little Mickey Mouse
And old Black Joe is their Santa Claus

I've heart that they've even got a Swannee River made of real lemonade
And though the good lord took your mammy
She'll be waiting for you In the pickaninny heaven
Heaven
Heaven

I get it.  

Plus she also recorded another song that has her legacy now destroyed.  "That's What Darkies Are For."   Forget the fact that this tune was also once sung by the Black Paul Robeson.  Kate Smith did it and now should rest in Hell for the rest of eternity.

So, you can no longer hear her rendition of "God Bless America" at Philadelphia Flyer hockey games, where it was once a good luck charm for the team.   The statue of her outside the hockey arena is now shrouded in black.

The New York Yankees used to play her record of the same song during the seventh inning stretch.  Um, no more.  Effectively, Kate Smith's career is now banned from discussion anywhere.

And our country swirls around the toilet once again.

These days, there is zero tolerance for anything racist, despite the fact that such songs and phrases and films and books are part of the historical fabric of this nation.  Yes, there used to be slavery.  Yes, there used to be segregation.  Sadly.

But we have come a long way in the last 100 years.   But you can't say that what once was never happened in the first place.

Several years ago, we marked the one-hundred-year anniversary of the release of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation."  This was a hallmark point in the evolution of the motion picture.   It should have received commemorative screenings.   

Nope.  Because it has "questionable" images, the film is shunned.

You may not want to hear this, but I suspect there is a similar future for the great "Gone With The Wind."  When that inevitably happens, our lives will be officially over.  

Kate Smith was probably not a racist.  She lived in a different era and a different time.   What was going on around her, like it or not, is historical fact.  She should not be condemned.

But, you see, there are currently members of our society (some of them in government) who want to change the great historical fabric of our nation.  This will continue up until the point where our history books will be censored and altered for eternity.

Essentially, for lack of a better term...whitewashed.

Yes, my grandmother would be mad.

Dinner last night:  Meat loaf at the R/D Kitchen.