- You probably heard about it , vaguely but Mark Steyn provides the real story
For many people, their first exposure to Mark Steyn was as a substitute host on the Rush Limbaugh show. Steyn, however, long before that, was a first rate political columnist, best selling author, and a bunch of other things, all of which he does superbly.
As a guest host I very much enjoy hearing Mark’s unique take on the news. He is entertaining as he discusses the day’s political events, but, more importantly there is no one, I believe, who gives a more informative back story on things than Steyn does. He gets the critical details like no other columnist or pundit I know of.
This week, in “Steyn on Line”, he demonstrates this talent as he provides interesting illumination on a story many people people have probably heard this week, but without the background Mark provides below.
The story is that the New York Yankees and some NY area hockey team have banned the playing of Kate Smith’s stirring rendition of “God Bless America”…if there were ever an iconic musical tribute to America, it has been this one for many decades.
The reason it has been banned, those who’ve heard of the action are told, is that Kate Smith, during a long and very successful career, recording some 500 songs, at one point in her career recorded a “racist” song for a Broadway show.
The song was titled “Why Darkies Were Born”…apparently the term “darkies” was all it took for the sanctimonious among us to determine Kate Smith was a racist.
As is usual the case with those among us who must spend a better part of their lives searching out “racism” wherever it can be found in order to forever silence their political enemies…whether or not the real racism is nothing more than the distortions lurking in their crippled little minds.
On this particular “issue of the day’, Mark Stein provides the real story behind the silliness going on in Yankee Stadium and the liberal NY press. Read it so when one of your nutty liberal friends warns you about the dangers of Kate Smith’s “God Bless America”!:
“The latest to be banished from public life is the great Kate Smith, the burly contralto who walloped “God Bless America” into public consciousness. Which is why until yesterday both the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Yankees played it at their games.
“Unfortunately, Miss Smith made the mistake of recording other songs, too, including one called “That’s Why Darkies Were Born”, written by Ray Henderson and Lew Brown for George White’s Scandals of 1931. Her fellow singer, the hardcore Communist Paul Robeson, who happens to be black, also made a famous recording of it. Why? Because he understood it to be a sardonic number by a couple of wise-guys for a sophisticated Broadway audience on the pathetic justifications offered for southern racism. Here’s the entire lyric: DLH
Someone had to pick the cotton
Someone had to pick the corn
Someone had to slave and be able to sing
That’s Why Darkies Were Born
Someone had to laugh at trouble
Though he was tired and worn
Had to be contented with any old thing
That’s Why Darkies Were Born
Sing, sing, sing when you’re weary
And sing when you’re blue
Sing, sing, that’s what you taught
All the white folks to do
Someone had to fight the Devil
Shout about Gabriel’s Horn
Someone had to stoke the train
That would bring God’s children to green pastures
That’s Why Darkies Were Born.
“It was part of a little group of Broadway revue songs of the late Twenties and early Thirties (“Black and Blue”, “Supper Time”) prodding audiences to address a persistent and ugly aspect of American life – back when it took a certain amount of courage to do so. Eighty years later, the social-justice wankers can barely comprehend anything written before 2008. So it’s not enough that, hedged in by the ever narrowing restraints of correct attitudes, our age cannot make anything of its own; it is also necessary that the entirety of the past be erased. Hence, at top right, that ludicrous cover-up of the Kate Smith statue in Philly. As I said on Rush, she looks like the third child bride of Mullah Omar.”
Political correctness run amuk, again by those too stupid to do the research. The true racists are those promoting this crap as political correctness. I, for one, will crank up the volume and roll the windows down if her song is ever played. Better yet, i’ll record it and pipe it thru the sound system. And give the one finger salute to anyone dumb enough to object to my face.
Back in those days, was Kate Smith subjected to a #me too environment. Was she bullied into recording those songs 88 years ago. Was she required by contract? Ask her. Oops, I guess that ship has sailed. It was bizarre when Bubba Watson re-painted the General Lee, and it became sublime when Kate Smith got the shroud. W.T. Hell?