in the face of a tragedy, US music puts some cover-up on its face

I recently exercised tact and did not make a comment that I really wanted to make on Facebook.

The post was from my boyfriend, discussing how he had never heard anything more disgusting than Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child” intercut with news coverage of the recent school shooting. And I really wanted to make a joke saying, yeah, they really should have put it to Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” instead.

But then again, I knew that that would cause some people to write me off as a horrendous person for the rest of my life, because I’m not allowed to have a humorous thought in aftermath of a tragedy.

In fact, in the aftermath of a tragedy, the song “Pumped Up Kicks” is not even allowed to exist on many major radio stations.

And then I got to thinking...America really likes to change who it is in the face of a tragedy. They pretend that they thought songs that make school shootings sound somewhat sexy were not okay all along. It’s kind of like deleting everything embarrassing from your diary and then allowing a close friend to read it cover to cover. It’s deceptive.

And it goes beyond the radio deleting things that are embarrassing. It extends to deleting things that in any way make the listener feel icky or think any thought that is anywhere related to the Big Bad Thing that has just happened.

After 9/11, music went through an utter pussification. Sorry to be profane, but I just can’t think of a better word to describe it.

Jimmy Eat World renamed their recent album, previously titled Bleed American, to be eponymous. It would be one thing if their album was titled Bleed, American. But it wasn’t. They just had to change it for all of those idiotic Americans who’ve never read a book in their lives, let alone Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

The Strokes re-released their album Is This It?, removing the track “New York City Cops” and replacing it with the most phoned-in, phoney piece of shit song I’ve ever heard. The original song was an upbeat account of misbehavior that happened to make the tongue-in-cheek assessment, “New York City cops/ They ain’t too smart.” Which is an idea that was not allowed to be thought in a post-9/11 world. Any reference that portrayed cops as anything other than noble heroes was prohibited.

Other little edits were temporarily made to the radio waves for a little while. A disgusting Toby Keith song about putting a “boot in your ass” if you messed with the red white and blue gained undeserved popularity. The song “Proud To Be An American” was played every few hours on mainstream radio stations as well, which, much like Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” I’ve never heard in the context of anything other than a joke.

Worse yet were the songs that were taken off. Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” met a brief hiatus, which I suppose is forgivable due to proximity. A little further removed from the situation was U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which had absolutely nothing to do with violence in the US or in the Middle East, but rather in Northern Ireland. Worst of all, for all of those sub-80 IQ Middle Americans out there, the Dave Matthews Band song “Crash Into Me” was temporarily taken from the airwaves. Yikes.

I guess what I’m trying to say is...we try to act like we value free speech, but in the face of tragedy, we have to practice overly careful, walking-on-eggshells speech. We have to retract anything that could make it look like problems exist. I don’t want to be emotionally manipulated into thinking it’s cool to put a boot in someone’s ass or that cops are generally intelligent. Do you?