He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

Digby has a good post about how upset churches are to discover that, if they take federal funds, they have to abide by federal laws. It’s funny, because I remember when they first were talking about opening up more faith-based programs to federal money and my dad thought it was a terrible idea. I remember, because it upset members of his congregation. But it was exactly for this reason–when you take the government’s money, the government gets to tell you how you can spend it.

I feel like, if that seemed self-apparent to a small-town preacher, it should have been self-apparent to a lot of people who are acting hurt and surprised now. Call me cynical, but I think they thought they should just ride the government-money train for as long as possible, even knowing that it wouldn’t end in a way they liked.

And now here we are.

Blackbird Amusement

There’s some country star who’s covering The Beatles’ “Blackbird” and it came on this morning. I turned to watch the Butcher’s face and he was somehow grimacing and frowning at the same time. Like his face was pulled into a grimace immediately but then, the longer we listened, the more the song weighed on the corners of his mouth until his whole face just looked like “What the fuck?”

We then tried to figure out what was so god-awful about it. He thought it was because, if you weren’t going to show off your massive guitar chops, you shouldn’t bother to cover the song. I thought it seemed like she brought nothing new to the table. It was just her singing the song. Nothing about her singing the song caused me to hear something new or different in it.

The Butcher brought up that some other country artist is covering a Will Hoge song that he really likes and every time it comes on the radio, he stops to listen and enjoy and then it’s not Will Hoge, but some other voice.

I think this is part of my problem with the “Blackbird” cover. If it’s so close to the original, just with your voice, I’d rather hear The Beatles and it kind of makes me angry when it’s not them.