The Frinklin and Fred Show

Glad to hear that there is another KIXI listener under the age of 80 out there.

In defense of Sir Mix-a-Lot, let it be noted that the video for "Baby Got Back" included a play on the word "callypigian," which word I didn't even know at the time the song came out. And while Bing is reaffirming the same old beauty image, Sir Mix declared that Cosmo didn't know what made a girl hot, and praised athletes like Flo-Jo instead of actresses like Jane Fonda.

Also, to be honest, I read those lyrics and at first assumed it was just being sarcastic about the worth of personality, which didn't endear the song to me. And why do you assume he's talking about tits instead of ass?

Fair enough. All due appreciation to Sir Mix-A-Lot for whipping out the old thesaurus and finding a ten-dollar word meaning "Nice butt."

As far as my assertion that he's singing about breasts, it was at least partly tongue-in-cheek. I would suggest, though, that extolling the wonders of women's rear ends in song, directly or indirectly, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Thus, my assumption. Perhaps old Bing was a rump man at heart.

Well, specifically he parodies Cosmopolitan magazine and creates his own version (Cosmopygian) that celebrates women who aren't the standard beauty image: "I'm tired of magazines/ Sayin' flat butts are the thing... I ain't talkin' bout Playboy/ 'Cause silicone parts are made for toys... So Cosmo says you're fat/ Well I ain't down with that."

Eh, maybe it's a feminist thing to appreciate a rapper who can talk about women in a celebratory way, more than an old crooner who implies that the idea a woman's personality could be important is obviously silly.

See, and I'd argue that both Der Bingle and Sir Mix are objectifying women in their songs, and you happen to prefer Sir Mix's objectification because it doesn't conform to the "standard beauty image." Maybe that's progress, but in the end, I think it's a matter of taste. And in that matter, give me the old crooner every day and twice on Sunday. Rap music upsets my digestion.

I don't see Sir Mix-a-Lot's objectification of women as any more objectionable than looking at female political candidates and joking that they should have won based on how attractive they would make the delegation. In some respects the latter could be seen as worse, because it brings appearance into an arena where ideally it should be irrelevant (competence to govern). Even I'm not such an idealist as to think that physical appearance ever will be irrelevant to people's decisions on whom they'd like to date or have sex with, and I'm resigned to beauty's being part of the relationship sphere (as Walzer might put it).

Given that both Bing and Mix are talking about what makes women attractive, yes, I like that the song incorporates rebuttal to a uniform idea of what's beautiful and states its own preference for athletes over pinups, and doesn't have an implied disbelief that women's personalities are relevant to their overall attractiveness.

Re: your first point, I never said that my fawning over attractive female political candidates wasn't objectionable. It surely is. I'm a political junkie who likes to look at attractive women; I can only be who I am.

Re: your second point, I refer to your previous comment: "Eh, maybe it's a feminist thing to appreciate a rapper who can talk about women in a celebratory way, more than an old crooner who implies that the idea a woman's personality could be important is obviously silly." I may quarrel with your terms, but I think perhaps it's a feminist thing to value songs by their attitude toward women as opposed to, say, their musical merit. And perhaps it's a crabby-old-codger thing to think veiled references to anatomy are preferable to the crude straightforward reference. (shrug) We can only be who we are.

"a feminist thing to value songs by their attitude toward women"

Certainly, just as it's a Marxist thing to view everything in terms of class struggle, or a classical liberal thing to view everything in terms of the maximization of human freedom.

Your original post prizes the old song for its literate references; I pointed out that Sir Mix made literate references as well. You disparaged Sir Mix's as "ten dollar word," albeit deployed more accurately than some of Bing's references. (Jupiter is with his sister Juno to centralize power -- c.f. sibling incest among Egyptian royalty -- not for her "bazongas" or else he'd be with Venus; there is no such couple as Figaro and "Figarette," and if he means Mozart's or Beaumarchais's Figaro, his lover was Susanna).

Nor do I find Bing's song particularly subtle or inoffensive, given its cheery references to workplace harassment and keeping a mistress. I suppose it's easier to play such music around, say, an incurious child who never asks "why would somebody sit on her boss's knee?" than it would be to play a song that begins with someone actually saying the word "prostitute."

I stumbled onto this old discussion via a google search for "Cosmopygian" and, boy, you were both wrong.

The song was written for the movie The Road to Utopia, which I happened to watch for the first time a week ago. In the movie, the song is sung by Dorothy Lamour's character when she tries to seduce the characters played by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

In this context, the song is considerably more cynical and satirical than either of you realized, especially if you 'see the video'.