Today’s College Students Can’t Handle the Stones

One of my stations at Pandora is The Moody Blues, one of the bands that comprised the Progressive Rock scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Millennials who wonder what progressive rock is should consider a song that lasted an entire 20 minutes. Wow Groovy!

The Moody Blues station at Pandora is not precise and so throws in other bands like the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones — it’s more period that genre specific. The other night I heard the Stones song, “Sympathy for the Devil,” and it got me wondering if many of the social justice warriors that protest across America’s campuses would line up to keep Mick Jagger and Keith Richards from performing.

Here are a few highlights:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul to waste
And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

Not sure how Jesus ranks these days in social justice sensitivities, but given the contemporary hostility to Russia, these stanzas might receive approval.

What comes next though is rough:

I rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
(Woo woo, woo woo)

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
(Woo woo, woo woo)

I shouted out,
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
(Who who, who who)

Killing monarchs might be acceptable, all that privilege, but to identify with the Nazis or the assassins who brought down America’s own Democratic nobility is going some distance if not too far.

But then, maybe Richards and Jagger redeem themselves in the last stanza:

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint
(Who who, who who)

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(Woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, mm yeah
(Woo woo, woo woo)

Today’s social justice warriors are generally suspicious of law enforcement and so might leave “Sympathy for the Devil” with a warm spot in their hearts.

But that raises the question, if the Stones can ask for sympathy for Satan, can’t Donald Trump get some too?

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