When the levee breaks
But something touched me deep inside
Singer-songwriter Don McLean has announced that he’s dropping out from performing at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting this weekend in Houston, saying it would be “disrespectful and hurtful” to perform days after 19 children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting in the state.
McLean, who is best known for his legendary 1971 folk rock anthem “American Pie,” was scheduled to perform Saturday night during the NRA’s Grand Ole Night of Freedom concert. But those plans changed when a gunman, identified by police as Salvador Rolando Ramos, 18, entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., and started firing on children in the worst mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade.
“In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform for the NRA at their convention in Houston this week,” McLean, 76, said in a statement. “I’m sure all the folks planning to attend this event are shocked and sickened by these events as well. After all, we are all Americans.” — Washington Post
Long, long time ago
I can still remember
Charlton Heston and his cold dead hands
‘Cause he knew people of the gun
No longer owned them just for fun
‘Cause something in them snapped with Vietnam
And each November they would turn out
And vote for any dunce or burnout
Who’d fill the courts with judges
Who shared their rightwing grudges
And in their courts their lawyers filed
To stop all laws, however mild,
That thwarted their sweet killer child
The day the guns went wild
So bye, bye, Don McLean ain’t your guy
Agent called me ‘bout Uvalde, and I said “gotta fly,”
A nation’s watching and I ain’t gonna lie:
My career’s not ready to die,
My career’s not ready to die
After years of cases the courts said, “Hey,
You can bring bazookas to Chick-fil-A,
That’s what this Amendment says to me —
And if a guy snaps and he shoots some kids
Remember: It’s him, not the gun that did,
So lock up the guy, but let the guns go free
And if you’re in cities where guns are a plague
Sorry, I don’t think the Founders were vague,
It’s gotta be a national blight —
Unlike abortion, guns are a right!”
So the sane fought the courts and the NRA
As SCOTUS lined up to blow ‘em away
For donors who were glad to pay
For the day the guns went nuts
I started singing,
Bye, bye, Don McLean ain’t your guy etc.
NRA was charged with corruption and fraud,
They went bankrupt and they prayed to God
But their flock stayed loyal, armed to the teeth
By the sane, the NRA was hated
But their minions’ mayhem accelerated
‘Til we had a new mass shooting every week.
Give us gun control, the people say,
But their voice ain’t as loud as the NRA
’Cause the people just have a vote —
NRA bought Joe Manchin a boat!
And as murder soared and bodies piled
NRA was everywhere reviled
But Wayne LaPierre just sat and smiled
The day the guns went nuts
I started singing,
Bye, bye, Don McLean ain’t your guy etc.
[Slow, mournful]
Just a couple months ago
I signed a contract for a show
And yes, I knew who countersigned
When I told friends, they’d scowl and sneer
But the fee was good and the check would clear
So I didn’t really pay them any mind
But though their sneers could not provoke me
When I rehearsed, my conscience choked me
Just one thing could relieve me
I know you don’t believe me
But that’s the punch that fate can pack
That makes an ally from a hack
And maybe leads the long way back
From the day the guns went nuts
And now I’m singing,
Bye, bye, Don McLean ain’t your guy etc.
Roy is old enough to remember that not long before American Pie came out, America was in the middle of an epidemic of gun violence that involved a specific type of firearm--the Saturday night special. These were cheap handguns; small revolvers that were mass produced and flooded the streets. Lyndon Johnson pushed for, and got, legislation banning the manufacture and sale of Saturday night specials.
That was then, this is now. A Saturday night special could kill two or maybe three people if the shooter was really lucky, while a modern assault rifle can kill dozens. We banned one because the death toll was unacceptable; we're now told that no amount of death is reason enough to ban the other. I'm sure it's no small coincidence that Saturday night specials were flooding ghettoes (and thus a weapon "those people" could easily access), which made them easy to outlaw. Just as I'm sure it's no coincidence at all that assault rifles are the death-toys of choice for White men, and thus cannot be outlawed or even meaningfully regulated.
Brilliant. I'm starting to feel like Eeyore here, but I feel compelled to point out that McLean is an abuser of women, so his (past?) affinity for the gun cult is not surprising. Domestic violence and gun violence go together like soup and sandwich.