If you’re like most people, your enjoyment of the Christmas classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was probably ruined the first time you really listened to the lyrics and thought, “Wow, that’s a little rape-y.”
Wait, most people aren’t like that at all, only the borderline insane.
If you’ve ever listened to the classic Christmas song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” then you know it’s a really screwed up tune.
A couple from Minneapolis, Minnesota, found the ditty so unnerving that they decided to revamp it for a modern audience, reworking the lyrics to “emphasize the importance of consent,” according to CNN.
The original 1944 lyrics by Frank Loesser include problematic lines like, “What’s in this drink?” crooned by a woman and “What’s the sense in hurtin’ my pride?” by the man.
The duo, singer-songwriters Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski, told CNN that they felt that the original song was “aggressive and inappropriate,” arguing that the listener never finds out what happens to the woman in the song.
“You never figure out if she gets to go home. You never figure out if there was something in her drink. It just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth,” said Liza.
The couple’s revised lyrics are adorably consensual, opening with “I really can’t stay” sung by Liza and “Baby, I’m fine with that” sung by Lemanski.
Most notably, when Liza sings, “I ought to say no, no, no,” Lemanksi responds with “You reserve the right to say no.”
It isn’t that important discussions don’t need to be had about some social topics, it’s that imbuing everything with a deeper political or social meaning regardless of context and original intent is, well, unbalanced. Paraphrasing Freud: sometimes a Christmas song from the 1950s is just a Christmas song from the 1950s. People who find something this benign to be “aggressive and inappropriate” aren’t guardians of good, they’re candidates for inpatient psychotherapy. What next? Animal abuse complaints about “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”? Indignant rage because the snowman “Parson Brown” in “Winter Wonderland” is just being used as an excuse for sex out of wedlock? OMG-WHAT IF “JINGLE BELLS” IS REALLY ABOUT LSD?!?
Sure, those all seem absurd, but so probably did the idea that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is sexually aggressive before you read this post.
I am not at all opposed to miserable people being miserable if that’s what they choose. The problem with social justice warrior progressives is that they won’t rest until everyone hates the world as much as they do. They’re very good at spreading misery.
Even through Christmas songs.
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