It depends on the time frame you are looking at. Some times we evolve ....some times we devolve.....depends on the era. In good economic times we tend to morally devolve.....bad times tend to reverse the process.
Posted on 02/08/2011 4:41:39 AM PST by scottfactor
I had not planned to write about the Super Bowl or its entertainment, but after seeing and hearing it, I’m going to do it; so forgive me a small, but intermediate, critique of the lousy state of modern “music” and culture.
We were getting ready to go to our next-door neighbors’ house to watch the Super Bowl, and we had our radio tuned to the National Football League broadcast of the pre-game. So, here comes the National Anthem, sung by Christina Aguilera. First of all, I have long hated the trend of singers nowadays to do these wild vocal gymnastics that take the notes of a song up and down and all around. It makes me cringe and quickly switch the station. This singer is one who does the vocal gymnastics.
When we heard the anthem begin, we stopped where we were on our front porch, put our hand over our heart and faced the flag. Right off the bat, she starts in with the note-mangling, roller coaster vocalization, and I can’t stand to hear the Star Spangled Banner sung in such an outrageous way. Why can’t these kids nowadays sing a straight, respectful, traditional rendition of our National Anthem?
Then, it got worse. She mangled the lyric. My husband and I quickly glanced, wide-eyed at each other with a “Did you hear that?!” expression. Yes, we did hear that, and so did the rest of America.
The New York Daily News reported,
“ [Christina Aguilera], 30, who has sung the National Anthem at many previous sporting events, including Game 7 of last year's NBA finals, bungled the lyrics, causing confusion amongst the crowd and with viewers at home.
‘What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last reaming,’ she belted about one minute into the song, to the bewilderment of somber Super Bowl fans.
What should have come next: ‘O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming.’”
Ms. Aguilera reportedly explained her lapse as, “I lost my place.” She was, after all, live in front of a giant stadium full of people, with millions more watching on television and listening on radio. It’s understandable that you might be a bit nervous, but this was not some high school kid in his first public performance; this was a professional performer with years of public singing experience.
I don’t know about you, but the Star Spangled Banner has been ingrained in my mind and heart from a very early age. I can sing it and not miss a word. Ms. Aguilera is only 30 years old. Could it be that schools are not teaching the kids the Star Spangled Banner like they used to? That song’s lyic should be second-nature, and the song should be sung in a respectful manner, not with the wailing and contorting of the notes of the song. It’s our National Anthem, after all—not some pop tart’s record!
It got even worse at halftime. I’ve heard of the Black Eyed Peas, but not having a televsion and not listening to the type of radio stations that might play their “music,” I was not familiar with their sound. If that’s what passes for music nowadays, there is no more music. That’s what our kids are feeding on. It sounded like noises from hell—I mean that literally! If the forces of hell were putting on a halftime show, there’s the music.
I realize that every generation of Americans has bemoaned the music of the younger generation, and there is a reason for it. It’s because our society devolves; it doesn’t evolve. As we have moved through time, even though knowledge and technology have increased, there has been a steady process of degeneration in our culture and morality and the minds and hearts of the people.
Part of that is certainly the dumbed-down public school curriculum. Despite being given billions of dollars of taxpayer money year after year, the schools are no longer providing a quality education to students. Instead, the schools churn out kids who can’t even write a legible paragraph and who do not know the correct history of our nation and world. Since God was removed from the public schools in the 1960s, the degeneration has been progressing more each year, and we are now left with the results of a watery “education” with no moral foundation—a nation overrun with people who have never gained even the most basic knowledge of God’s truth and why it matters.
It’s also true that music has devolved. What passes for music, as illustrated by the horrible halftime show, is nothing more than a barbaric beat with the harsh chanting of words that appeal to the basest instincts of those who fill their ears and hearts with that garbage. Hip hop or rap, or whatever you want to call it, is not music; it’s poison for the soul. And, it’s quite disturbing that so many young people are hooked on that poison.
I’ve heard some of this noise in passing here and there, from cars whose owners cynically and rudely blast the evil racket, forcing all nearby to hear. While scanning the radio dial, I’ve heard the foul and wicked lyrics, full of mindless sex and violence. Can anyone understand the influence and power of those sounds on the minds and hearts of our younger generations? Is anyone paying attention to the increasingly violent and horribly promiscuous behavior of kids nowadays? Is anyone associating the two?
Yes, people have always “acted up,” and done bad things, but it would only be an oblivious person who would not be able to see the steady degradation of the minds and morals of each new generation of Americans. This is by design. Not only is solid morality cast aside, but in its place is the fallacious mindset of relativism which says that the definition of right and wrong depends on each man’s opinion and perception. This warped thinking is pounded home throughout the entertainment world, as well as the public school systems.
The influence of socialistic indoctrination in the public schools has also been molding people to be more amenable to looking to an all-powerful government for their sustenance. It is stripping away individual initiative and creativity and personal responsibility. In short, it’s creating a nation of dumb sheep. As Michael Savage might say, here is the world through a Super Bowl halftime show.
Ironically, as I cringed at the sound of the Black Eyed Peas, other critics complained that their performance was lackluster and boring! It’s amazing that two people can look at the same object and see entirely different things.
Although I didn’t catch the lines, the Black Eyed Peas apparently threw in some politics on one of their halftime pieces. As a columnist on the Orange County Register’s website wrote,
“Which brings me to the bit that political pundits with nothing better to discuss may natter on about come Monday morning: will.i.am’s lyrical change-up for the first verse of ‘Where Is the Love?’: ‘In America we need to get things straight / Obama, let’s get these kids educated / Create jobs so the country stays stimulated.’’
Oh, the irony! The kids are educated exactly as planned. The fact that groups like the Black Eyed Peas achieve such huge success is a testament to the kind of public school education our kids are receiving, and it’s not good.
So, what good does all my lamenting do? Probably not much, but I’m saying things that I am certain many people believe about our popular culture. It’s rotten to the core. If we ever hope to change the rot, we have to first address it and acknowledge it. Define it, then defeat it. How? We have to offer something true and good in its place, and that is a mighty tall order—not just offering a replacement for the moral rottenness in entertainment, but finding an audience to receive it. Not many people in our world have a taste for the truth. It comes down to changing the hearts of the people, and that is a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do at this point in our world where so many have firmly rejected the truth.
Until or if we figure out how to reclaim our culture, can we at least feature singers who will render our National Anthem in the classic and honorable styling, and return the talented marching bands to the field for halftime shows?
I have heard recordings on YOUTUBE of her at hockey games and it seems to me that she doesn't. She looks like she is about to experience an orgasm rather than an affirmation.
It is an uplifting song but it is about a terrible time in American history when our country was attacked and the future outcome lay in the balance.
I just miss Robert Merrill!!!
That is why I found a recording of his on YOUTUBE before posting this. GOD BLESS.
Roy Masters - Marxian Opiates Redefined
Marx - the icon of choice when deceiving people into abandoning true freedom for addictive slavery.
Socialism, whether you call it communism, liberalism or whatever, is the opiate dependent ideology.
Alcoholism was a major health and social problem in the Soviet Union and remains a problem in the Russian Federation. Efforts by the communist government to combat alcoholism were largely unsuccessful. Alcoholism had a serious impact on the Soviet economy that could not be overlooked. But communism had a serious impact on the human spirit, and that was deliberately overlooked.
While socialist countries recognize the damaging effects of alcoholism, they do much to suppress its use and nothing to address the cause. Hereditary factors influencing alcohol abuse are insufficient to explain the widespread abuse, and when alcohol becomes difficult to obtain because of state regulations, other escapist drugs take its place. Socialists simply refuse to accept that the societies they have created drive people to flight, even if by drug induced fantasy.
I’m not suggesting capitalist societies are free of drug abuse. Escaping the realities of life by artificial means will always have a public following. There is however a stark difference between capitalist and socialist reality and what the individual can do to change that reality or choose to escape. Despite the hallucinatory ranting of liberals about the “evils of capitalism” and oppression, we have considerably more choices than those living in the truly oppressed “socialist paradises” of Cuba, China, Zimbabwe or Vietnam. Escapism remains a choice under capitalism, but one less likely to be exercised where liberty and morality reside.
My “capitalist masters” are not dictating where I work, where I live, what school I attend, what I eat, what healthcare I obtain, what news programs I watch or what beliefs I hold. In every case, I am the deciding and limiting factor. Socialist masters would make all those choices for me. Instead of choosing what I think is best for me I would be expected to accept their decisions because they allegedly know what is best for society. It is slavery and cannot overwhelm the human desire for liberty, hence escape by whatever means possible becomes the alternative liberty.
American liberals haven’t quite convinced the American public to abandon the capitalist system for rule by an oligarchy of socialist elites. To advance their cause, liberals employ opiates. The attack on capitalism using opiates to diminish free will and abandon moral responsibility.
Capitalism without morality is no better than socialism. Liberal attacks on religion serve two purposes. The first is to bring about amoral capitalism that will be rejected and self-destruct, as it should. The second purpose is to remove any obstacle to the absolutist rule of the socialist elite by eliminating the idea that a higher moral authority might exist. The elite will determine what is right or wrong, good or bad and we will obediently follow since there is no higher moral authority.
The welfare state is an opiate. The recipients receive their fixes in exchange for political support. It may not be paradise, but it sure beats working, saving and having to struggle for a living, at least for those whose greatest aspiration is to not miss their favorite television talk-show host or win the lottery.
The most powerful opiate on the liberal menu is sex. It is highly addictive and produces exactly the stupor needed to sedate the public. It costs nothing, is readily available, and to a large extent can be made consequent free. Sex sells and that message has never been lost on liberal politicians. Under the guise of “sexual freedom”, “reproductive rights” and the “right to privacy”, the gullible are buying it wholesale.
The destruction of the family is of little concern to socialists. The states opportunity to shape young minds is enhanced by dysfunctional families. The socialist elite are addicted to control and families are just a nuisance competing for obedience. Loyalty to the socialist state must be paramount and not impeded by a misguided sense of family.
Drugs, sex, a welfare check and other government “gifts” are a means to an end. Why bow to a God that would deprive you of these carnal pleasures and a life of ease when you can elect a politician that guarantees them? Why struggle with concepts of right and wrong when the government can do that for you? Why burden yourself with responsibilities the government will gladly assume? Why not just swallow the liberal opiates and accept life in a stupor?
No, the whole pop and r&b culture uses “autotune” since they can’t sing. Now they have enhanced it to sound “cool”. That’s the weird bending, robotic effect you hear.
Communists have been using Negro culture as a weapon against us going back to the Scottsboro boys.
They should have had T-Pain do an auto-tune anthem. That would have been interesting.
Thanks for that.
Here’s a few more. Not all the Anthem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJI_rlar68M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ETrr-XHBjE <— includes flyover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvpxVE_kQXg <— during Gulf War 1 (1991 - great visuals)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E <- Lee Greenwood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvj6zdWLUuk <— nice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwL_9Z3jSmk <— this one still hurts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWrMeBR8W-c <— a PERSONAL favorite
I don't even argue with fools about Sports anymore. Why bother with politics.
I saw one player get penalized in the end zone for unsportsmanlike conduct when he got on his knees and held both arms up to God.
Wow, somehow that's on a par with a late hit on a quarterback!
I can't understand why football players don't get kicked in the face for their antics. Maybe all that padding protects them from harm. I also think the fact that players only play one side of the ball makes a difference too. Anyway, NFL football, generally speaking, is a bad influence on culture, imo, or at least a reflection of a sick, ignoble culture.
I never understood that. Celebrating after scoring an actual touchdown, especially one that causes a lead change, is one thing, but after routine plays like this? Lame.
What troubled me more, with a bit more research, is that their hit "Boom Boom Pow" uses the word "Sh!T" like 8 times, in places where it rhymes and the lyrics don't make sense without it (OK, they don't make sense anyway, but hey . .).
It's surprising that the NFL, after the "Little Brown Jug" incident (Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction), would allow them to perform that number if they knew a profanity was a key part of the lyrics.
It’s not like they just pump their fists either. They’ll do a dance, wave their arms around, shout and taunt. An uncontrollable burst of emotion is one thing. Taunting and showboating is another. It makes me sick to watch it. I don’t get why more people aren’t reviled by it.
I don’t believe that ‘ghetto’ and ‘negro’ culture are the same thing. My understanding of ‘ghetto’ is that it is an american-grown product, cultivated in the last 50 years of the ‘great society’. ‘Negro’ culture, on the other hand, is not only diverse but rich. The two may seem to intercept on a grand scale, but one is still worthy to be celebrated. The other needs to die a quick death.
This WWII Marine is still performing, why isn’t he in any halftime shows? This was American music forty years ago, even an embittered old curmudgeon like me can’t watch it without getting misty eyed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEMT93yX2ZU
And this next link is his first big hit that stopped me in my tracks when I was 12 years old in 1956. Ray Price served in World War two and is still performing now, imagine!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuOvllD8Baw
How on Earth The Cherokee Cowboy can keep standing up and walking out on stage after seeing what has happened to this country is beyond my understanding. Contemporary music? Contemporary noise is all it is.
It depends on the time frame you are looking at. Some times we evolve ....some times we devolve.....depends on the era. In good economic times we tend to morally devolve.....bad times tend to reverse the process.
http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/playlist/13492/2193475?cpt=8&title=truveo_full_feed&wpid=2541
CONSERVATIVES!!!! WE MUST WORK TO SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS! Godlessness, socialist-funded, collectivist run can NOT be fixed!
Yes, I am shouting, jumping up and down, and having a fit! Socialist and godless government schooling is one of our nation's most urgent and serious threats! We may win a few more elections, but we will lose eventually if we continue to turn our kids over to the Moloch fires of socialist and godless government schooling.
Since God was removed from the public schools in the 1960s,
God, was removed from the government schools by my grandmother's day ( born 1894). Already, by then, she had a completely secular government education with a sprinkle of prayer in the morning. Yes, this godless secularism was mitigated for her because her teachers were, for the most part believing Christians. There was a HUGE difference between her godless government education and the Catholic parochial education that my mother and I and my siblings received.
In the mid-1800s, Horace Mann, a progressive Unitarian and one of the founders of our modern government schools, imposed upon American children a generic and lukewarm Protestantism in the new system of compulsory government schools. We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of His mouth!
The plan for government schools since their inception in the mid-1800s to early 1900s has **ALWAYS** been to continually move toward increasingly godless secularism. The governments schools are NOT failures. They are succeed fabulously well in achieving this and other goals.
If children attend godless government schools they **WILL** learn to think godlessly. They will either learn to be godless secularists themselves or at minimum learn to compartmentalize their faith. They MUST do this merely to participate in the godless program, do the godless homework, read the godless textbooks, and turn in godless assignments.
The author's statement above implies that if we returned the schools to the 1960's that they would somehow be fixed. NO! They wouldn't. I attended 11th and 12th grade in a government high school from the fall of 1962 to the spring 1964. They were godless then, with a sprinkle of prayer in the morning. The teachers and godless secular curriculum were already pushing the boundaries of "edgy".
Government schools can NOT be fixed. It is impossible to fix collectivism, socialist-funded, government managed, collectivist run, compulsory, prison-like schools whose moral direction takes its cue from voting mob comrade committees ( school boards)!
And...Merely by attending these schools children will learn to be comfortable with godlessness, collectivism, socialism, godlessness, compulsory prison-like programs, that are run by voting mob comrade committees!
the degeneration has been progressing more each year,
Well!...Duh!...Whereas my grandmother ( born 1894) was subjected to a godless curriculum with a sprinkle of prayer in the morning, she did have the benefit of Christian teachers. This is much less the case today.
and we are now left with the results of a watery “education” with no moral foundation—a nation overrun with people who have never gained even the most basic knowledge of God’s truth and why it matters.
Yep!
John Dewey, the Fabian socialist ( communist), would be so proud of his creation. Our schools are like a grown up Rosemary's Baby.
Part of that is certainly the dumbed-down public school curriculum. Despite being given billions of dollars of taxpayer money year after year, the schools are no longer providing a quality education to students. Instead, the schools churn out kids who can’t even write a legible paragraph and who do not know the correct history of our nation and world.
No wonder our nation's children are failing academically. ""The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:7)"
what ever kind of singing it was it was awful.
I’;m fed up of hearing the anthem being sung in a way where notes are carried for 30 secs, lets get back to how the song should be sung
Vocal gymnastics . . . hate them for the most part. In small doses it’s nice. Every time I see Jennifer Hudson doing the Weight Watchers commercial and she’s braying I have to turn it off. These gals could learn a thing or two from listening to singers like Cleo Laine or Jane Olivor. But everything has to be over the top these days to the point of being clownish.
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