A Well-Respected Man

While I was browsing through YouTube looking for the Kinks song I posted on Monday, I came across the video of them singing "A Well-Respected Man" and I knew an opportunity for using it would have to come up soon, and sure enough, here comes our friend Mike with a post about Why I'm A Liberal and a response is called for. The video is wonderful, and well worth watching, but for this post I want to focus on the lyrics:

A Well-Respected Man

'Cause he gets up in the morning,
And he goes to work at nine,
And he comes back home at five-thirty,
Gets the same train every time.
'Cause his world is built 'round punctuality,
It never fails.

And he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And his mother goes to meetings,
While his father pulls the maid,
And she stirs the tea with councilors,
While discussing foreign trade,
And she passes looks, as well as bills
At every suave young man

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he likes his own backyard,
And he likes his fags the best,
'Cause he's better than the rest,
And his own sweat smells the best,
And he hopes to grab his father's loot,
When Pater passes on.

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he plays at stocks and shares,
And he goes to the Regatta,
And he adores the girl next door,
'Cause he's dying to get at her,
But his mother knows the best about
The matrimonial stakes.

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

Yes, that's right, wingnuts were just as much fun to mock in 1968 as they are now. Mike talks in his post about how vilified "liberals" have become based on crude stereotypes perpetrated by the right. As I see it, this is just a pendulum swing. The 60's were a reaction to the perceived repression and hypocrisy of the 50's - they didn't happen in a vacuum. The current backlash against liberals appears to be little more than rightwing pushback, and of course the class resentment and anger of those whose bigotry and privilege afforded them power they didn't deserve and were forced by society to relinquish. And as we all know, they haven't given up yet.