WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Piers Morgan dismantled cancel culture for ‘ruining’ Christmas: ‘Sucking joy out of life.’
Beloved Christmas song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” which was written by Frank Loesser and popularised in the 40s film “Neptune’s Daughter”, has caused controversy in the past decade. The song, which has been covered by world-famous crooners such as Dean Martin, has faced criticism among some listeners for the alleged implications of its lyrics. The male vocal part’s unrelenting pressure for the female to “stay” despite repeated suggestions she should go home have been described in certain quarters as suggestive of sexual harassment.
The first time the song was widely criticised for its lyrics was 12 years ago.
Then, in 2018 “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was cancelled by a number of radio stations in Canada and the US after social media criticism and public pressure.
In a throwback episode of Good Morning Britain, Mr Morgan was apoplectic about efforts to ban the song, and suggested that cancel culture was “sucking the joy out of life”.
A few decades back, a young middle-class Egyptian spending some time in the US had the misfortune to be invited to a dance one weekend and was horrified at what he witnessed:
The room convulsed with the feverish music from the gramophone. Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips . . .
Where was this den of debauchery? Studio 54 in the 1970s? Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love? No, the throbbing pulsating sewer of sin was Greeley, Colorado, in 1949. As it happens, Greeley, Colorado, in 1949 was a dry town. The dance was a church social. And the feverish music was “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” as introduced by Esther Williams in “Neptune’s Daughter.” Revolted by the experience, Sayyid Qutb decided that America (and modernity in general) was an abomination, returned to Egypt, became the leading intellectual muscle in the Muslim Brotherhood, and set off a chain that led from Qutb to Zawahiri to bin Laden to the Hindu Kush to the Balkans to 9/11 to the brief Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt to the Islamic State marching across Syria and Iraq. Indeed, Qutb’s view of the West is the merest extension of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — America as the ultimate seducer, the Great Satan.
I’m a reasonable chap, and I’d be willing to meet the Muslim Brotherhood chaps halfway on a lot of the peripheral stuff like beheadings, stonings, clitoridectomies and whatnot. But you’ll have to pry “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from my cold dead hands and my dancing naked legs. A world without “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” would be very cold indeed.
Indeed.™