Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Have Republicans Ever Actually Listened to the Lyrics of YMCA?

Yesterday we were treated to the sight of a major party nominee at what was supposed to be a town hall meeting suddenly stop taking questions and just dancing (badly) for the better part of an hour.   A mere 20 years ago, well within living memory, less than five seconds of screaming were enough to end Howard Dean's political career.  My, how times change.

But the truly astonishing thing, the real elephant in the room, is not just that Trump could swing his hips for 39 minutes and still have a shot at becoming President of the United States of America, it is that one of the songs on his playlist was YMCA by the Village People.  I wonder if anyone in his audience has ever paid attention to what that song is actually about.

Here are the lyrics to the first verse and chorus for easy reference:

Young man, there's no need to feel down, I said
Young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said
Young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy
Young man, there's a place you can go, I said
Young man, when you're short on your dough you can
Stay there and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time

It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
They have everything for young men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal
You can do whatever you feel
In case it's not obvious (and apparently it isn't) this song is about young men going to the YMCA to have promiscuous sex with other men. That is what they are celebrating.  That is what Donald Trump has led them to, almost certainly without himself even realizing it.  Trump is so clueless, and his followers are so clueless, that they can't even decipher "You can do whatever you feel" when sung by a group of men dressed in homoerotic iconography.

Maybe if more people pointed this out to them the scales would start to fall from their eyes?  Probably not, but a boy can dream.

UPDATE: Heh, I just noticed that Trump has a telling Freudian slip just before he calls for YMCA to be played.  He tries to say, "We're going to make the country great again" but he slips and what actually comes out of his mouth is "We're going to make the country gay..." just before he catches himself and stops mid-aphorism.  So maybe deep down he does know.