firehose

Have you heard this young lady, Lorde, on the radio? Yesterday the New York Times posted a review of her recent performance at Webster Hall, and I’m kind of at a loss about the way that her big hit, Royals, is being talked about there and elsewhere. Now I’m a music lover, but since the only radio stations I listen to are the local hip hop station and NPR, I hadn’t heard this one – which I hear has been making the rounds on pop stations for a minute -  until somewhat recently:

(Full transcript of lyrics at the end of post)

Folks who have spent some time with me know that I deeply love music videos, so when I saw this posted on social media, I went straight to the video. Holy. Shit. What did this white girl just say?

My friends and I – we’ve cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this,
We didn’t come from money.

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

While I love a good critique of wealth accumulation and inequity, this song is not one; in fact, it is deeply racist. Because we all know who she’s thinking when we’re talking gold teeth, Cristal and Maybachs. So why shit on black folks? Why shit on rappers? Why aren’t we critiquing wealth by taking hits at golf or polo or Central Park East? Why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality? I’m gonna take a guess: racism. I don’t have to explain why wealth operates differently among folks who’ve grown up struggling because this shit has been explained already: If you grew up with holes in your zapatos you’d celebrate the minute you was having dough.

The New York Times, however, thinks it’s just so fresh and insightful:

Ms. Perry and Ms. Cyrus sing about something teenage girls are presumed to have on their minds: what’s left of self-esteem after a breakup. (Dr. Luke, the architect of dozens of hit singles, collaborated on both songs.) Lorde, meanwhile, is singing about class consciousness and conspicuous consumption: the gap between pop-culture fantasies of Cadillacs and diamonds and the reality of being someone who “didn’t come from money.” It’s a thoughtful, calmly insubordinate song; it’s also written by an actual teenager.

While I am all about youth writing music that is targeted for youth, let’s not pretend that there is anything new about this particular kind of racism.

Yes, Lorde is only sixteen, but this is no viral video she put out outta her basement on her own; mad people signed off on this. Record execs have been working with her since she was 12; several, no, many people listened to this track, and saw no problem with it at all. And while I’m less mad at Lorde (who’s from New Zealand) than I am at the New York Times – and more generally white liberal critics that have been so captivated by Royals‘ call-out of consumption that they didn’t bother to take the time to think critically about the racial implications of the lyrics – this isn’t to say that there should be no accountability for her. I’m thinking of fierce youth activists who get it, are doing the work, and from whom Lorde could learn quite a bit. She apparently calls herself a feminist – let’s just hope her feminism gets a lot less racist as she develops as an artist.

Lyrics: Royals, by Lorde:

I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh
I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies
And I’m not proud of my address,
In a torn-up town, no post code envy

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair.

And we’ll never be royals.
It don’t run in our blood,
That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler,
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

My friends and I – we’ve cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this,
We didn’t come from money.

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

And we’ll never be royals.
It don’t run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler,
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

We’re bigger than we ever dreamed,
And I’m in love with being queen.
Life is great without a care
We aren’t caught up in your love affair.

And we’ll never be royals.
It don’t run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler,
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

Original Source

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A New Problem in Ireland: Where to Find a Non-Catholic School?

DUBLIN—Sarah Lennon’s son Ethan is just 7 weeks old, and she’s already stressing out about his applications for primary schools. A lapsed Catholic, she hopes to land him a spot at a sought-after multi-denominational school in suburban Dublin—one of few alternatives to the Church-run schools in her neighborhood.

“It’s quite urgent to have our name down early and have the Catholic school here as a back up,” Lennon said. “But the Catholic school may not admit our son, unless we have his form in early, because he won’t be baptized.”

Lennon is among a growing number of Irish parents who no longer identify with the Catholic Church and struggle to find schools that don’t clash with their convictions. In Ireland—once considered the most Catholic country in the world—the Catholic Church runs more than 90 percent of all public schools. Other religious groups operate another 6 percent. But Ireland’s religiosity has waned in recent years, amid changing demographics, rising secularism and reports of Church sexual abuse and cover-ups.

Weekly church attendance among Irish Catholics dropped from more than 90 percent to 30 percent in the past four decades. Those in Ireland who identify as religious plummeted from 69 percent in 2005 to just 47 percent last year, according to a WIN-Gallup International poll. And the number of people who chose “no religion” in the last census soared, making non-believers the second largest group in the nation.

These changes are starting to crack the Catholic Church’s monopoly on Irish education, but not quickly enough to meet growing parental demand for school diversity.

Read more. [Image: Shawn Pogatchnik/AP]

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Jennifer Senior, "In Conversation: Antonin Scalia", New York, 10/6/2013:

Q: Had you already arrived at originalism as a philosophy?

A: I don’t know when I came to that view. I’ve always had it, as far as I know. Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change. I mean, the notion that the Constitution should simply, by decree of the Court, mean something that it didn’t mean when the people voted for it—frankly, you should ask the other side the question! How did they ever get there?

It's natural to be puzzled by this:

"Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change."

The second phrase is transparently false, which leaves us with the usual problem of interpretive abduction:

Maybe Justice Scalia was misquoted. You'd think that an interview of this kind would be recorded and and transcribed carefully, but journalists are sometimes amazingly careless about this type of thing.

Maybe he really thinks that word meanings don't change. This is unlikely, but conceivable.

Maybe he meant to express the tautology that what words meant in (say) 1789 is (and forever will be) what words meant in 1789. This seems to be the most likely theory, but if it's correct, he chose an unfortunate way to express himself, since what he actually said implies the obvious falsehood that what words meant in Shakespeare's time is exactly the same as what those words mean today.

To make sense of what he said, we're forced to reason in terms of the circumstances of the interaction and his likely communication intentions — and as I understand it, these are both factors that he himself prefers to banish from the interpretive process.

[There are obviously additional questions about how "word meaning", assuming it to be determinate and bounded as of a certain moment in time, should be applied in circumstances that are entirely outside of the experience and understanding of anyone living at that moment. But the point at issue here is intentionalism, not originalism.]