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A Hyper-Sensitive and Presumptuous Commentary on a Chicago Classic
Sometimes music and lyrics aren’t insidious
Before I begin, this is satire. I am fully aware that we have a great deal of violence and bigotry and evil in our country. But not every cultural artifact is part of it.
Okay. So they sing “if you leave me now, you’ll take away the very heart of me.” Sounds lovely if you are a healthy white male pop star.
But if you have heart disease, and nearly half of American adults have some kind of cardiovascular ailment, then you might not find those lyrics so sweet. And black Americans die of heart disease at a higher rate than other Americans. Meanwhile, the man who sang those lyrics, Peter Cetera is alive and healthy at 78.
But the song has a lot to say. Cetera sings “Ooh, girl. Just got to have you by my side.” Really? This misogynistic creep, this icon of oppressive paternalism seems to think that women are his property. Can you believe that people actually listened to this stuff without wincing?
No wonder that it was about this same time that Ted Bundy was imprisoning and killing young women. Did Chicago inspire those killings? We will never know.
But we do know that Bundy’s killing spree began after he was rejected by his longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer…
