Jeremy Helligar is a terrible writer that has had his work published at such places as People, Reader's Digest, Medium, and Yahoo! His recurring themes? Everything is racist.
In 2020, he claims that he was almost cancelled because he gave Beyonce's Lemonade album a negative review... oh, the horror!
Earlier this week, he rolled out of bed with this story: 11 Popular Songs You Didn't Know Were Actually Racist.
Let's review the list:
Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones
China Girl by David Bowie
Ahab the Arab by Ray Stevens
Illegal Alien by Genesis
Island Girl by Elton John
The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down by The Band
Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones
The Star Spangled Banner
Turning Japanese by the Vapors
Without a Song by Various Artists
Your Squaw is on the Warpath by Loretta Lynn
Instead of defending each song, one by one, like I planned on doing, I am going to straight out say that the whole list is garbage. With that said, I am going to start with Jesus Jones.
The "newest" song of the bunch, their one hit wonder Right Here, Right Now, was released in 1991, over 30 years ago. The Star Spangled Banner was written 200 years ago. How many of the songs that are on the list were written by the artist with malice in their hearts? Zero.
Helligar's tagline for his article is: "They're Catchy...And Offensive." Later in the article: "Systemic racism has been known to work itself into music."
And there's the ruse. Helligar is desperately trying to tie popular music into systemic racism, trying to impose his far-left talking points from today into the past. 30 to 200 years in the past. Of course 1991 was racist, just listen to Jesus Jones. What? I knew that song by heart before Helligar's missive and re-read the lyrics 10 more times before I published the article. Hellinger is creating racism where there is none. You cannot judge the art of yesterday by the standards of today's fringe. What Helligar is really trying to do is curb artistic freedoms and limit free speech.
By my Libertarian standards, all of the above songs are fine. Now I may not LIKE some of the songs on the above list, but not because they're 'racist', but because I just don't like 'em.
If you go to the dark web, you can find some REAL Racist songs. Songs where the artists sing about killing or assaulting minorities. But guess what? Those songs only have dozens of listeners. They cannot be viewed on platforms like YouTube. They cannot be shared on platforms like X or Facebook.
But Helligar is trying to prove institutional racism by saying the standards of yesterday had secret underlying messages.
Why am I in such a lather?
Do you remember the 1970's, when even the most hardcore Liberals were all about free speech? Writing music about drugs and banging teenage girls? Now the thought of free speech scares them. They pick on Ray Stevens, who wrote silly Novelty Songs 60 years ago.
The funny thing is, back in 2016, one of our first articles was: Top 10 Novelty Songs from the 50's and 60's that Couldn't Be Written Today. The songs couldn't be written today, not because they were racist, but because certain snowflakes would cry themselves to sleep if music wasn't based on a certain philosophical template. Guess what was # 2 on my list almost a decade ago? That's right, Ahab the Arab.
How about if I play the song Black and Huge for Jeremy Helligar. GWAR is a collection of Aliens from Antarctica that, in this instance, sang about Black Men with oversized genitalia trying to bang White Women. It came out about the same time as Right Here, Right Now. But GWAR's song wasn't a hit. GWAR wasn't popular enough for Helligar to pick on. Citing GWAR in his article would make Helligar look like more of an idiot than he already is.
[Really? The blood-soaked aliens? Wearing exaggerated costumes and carrying medieval weaponry?]
Black and Huge is very stereotypical, maybe even racist, if you're unfamiliar with the very basic literary concepts of HYPERBOLE or ARTISTIC LICENSE.
It's funny thinking about Helligar curling into a ball and pissing his pants because he heard the 'scary' music of GWAR.
You know what's offensive to me? Beyonce having over 100 different writers and producers on that Lemonade album. Beyonce isn't an artist, she's a corporation.
Editor's Note: I was so mad when I wrote this, I went to Social Media to send this article directly to Jeremy Helligar himself.
Jememy Helligar wasn't promoting what he just wrote.
"I knew it, I knew he wouldn't promote it, he's embarrassed," I thought.
Then I saw the article was actually written and published in 2020 by Reader's Digest, where it was promoted heavily then. Then re-published a second time in 2020, then once in 2021, then once in 2022, and then again 2 days ago with a 'new' release date. I don't get Reader's Digest, but I read the story this go around at MSN.
Helligar's article is proof that corporate media entities aren't trying to have open discourse or promote a variety of voices, but are attempting to move an overarching agenda. In this case, institutional racism.
Editor's Note II: I tried to think of the most offensive song that I could that I really liked.
It's probably I Shot Reagan (I Shot the Devil) by Suicidal Tendencies.
Why don't Lefty writers attack songs like I Shot Reagan?
Simple.
Let's say I started a punk band.
And I wrote the incendiary hit: I Shot Trump
Writers like Jeremy Helligar would defend my song, saying something like "even though I don't condone violence, I understand Fred's frustration with this generation's version of Hitler."
Let's say I started a punk band.
And I wrote the incendiary hit: I Shot Biden
Writers like Jeremy Helligar would attack my song, saying something like "violence has no place in modern society and Fred should be jailed for Hate Speech."
Let's say I started a punk band.
And I wrote the incendiary hit: I Shot Elon Musk
Why did I write I Shot Elon Musk? Well, the night before, my girlfriend cheated on me, and then I drank too much hard liquor. I came up with a killer bassline and was going to sing I Shot Trump, but the mnemonics weren't right. I needed a 3-syllable word, not a one or two syllable word. I just wanted to shoot something, and I heard Elon Musk talking about Jesus on Joe Rogan's Podcast and thought, "this guy's a moron. Someone should shoot him."
You get it now?
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