From Jada Pinkett Smith's facebook feed... this is why we must call this stuff out.

[LanternWaste]

16. I'm a big fan of early 20th century music...

I'm a big fan of early 20th century music (parlor songs, tin pan alley, and its predecessors for the most part), and over the past few months, I've really been awakened to the amount of male chauvinism in these early top 40 hits, and the attitudes of society the lyrics represented.

For example, a wonderfully toe-tapping piece is Hugh Canon's, 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?' (get Harry Connick's cover of it, and I'm dancing already). We don't know why Bill left, or under what circumstances, but his wife's response in both taking the blame and pleading for his return is...

"...I'll do de cooking, darling, I'll pay de rent; I knows I've done you wrong; ‘Menber dat rainy eve dat I drove you out, Wid nothing but a fine tooth comb? I knows I'se To blame; well, ain't dat a shame? Bill Bailey, won't you please come home? home?"

Granted, it's not as dramatic (or violent) as The Beatles 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer', but therein lies its strength-- it's (and songs like it) never analyzed as a social commentary against women, but simply for its standard 32-bar composition.

And as you said earlier in the thread, it's a tough thing to reconcile the chauvinism in the art with the art itself. I've always been a firm believer in separating the art from the artist, but how does one separate the art from the art? How does one rationalize the enjoyment of a song (or a poem, or a book) that engenders chauvinism (at best) or even violence against women (at worst)? A question that I don't think I'll be able to answer anytime in the near future.