13) TUCKER CARLSON

Hey Parents! Thanks for coming! I asked you to bring the kids and you showed up. It took awhile but that's okay. Man, ain't this something, this parenting thing? You probably listened to the album before your kids cuz let's be frank I have pulled some doozies in the past huh? The Ann Coulter thingy, the Pat Robertson one, Pretty Colors, Uncle Morris, Jaysus on and on with the soap box and the vulgarity ( I actually don't think I do vulgar stuff, and I don't do toilet humor. But I know Puritans and their ilk are not ones for minor or even major distinctions. Sorry, I dropped character) and my disdain for authority, for the love of God do you remember that song Cops I did? ( Had a run in with a lady at a gig in Racine Wisconsin. She took umbrage with that song. She told me that her son was a cop and she was going to call him and have him come down and beat me up.)

In the past maybe I have in fact challenged your liberal notions by telling brown people to buy guns or your well intentioned attitudes towards silly celebrity by acting out fucking Howie Mandell in the ass. I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. I was trying to have fun. Well parents, with the exception of the big fat F bomb in Pray I think we got ourselves  pretty much a G rated album here. On the surface. Initially the title of the album was going to be, 'Every Song Could End in Bloodshed. Bring the Kids.' I loved that title. I was alone on that. Even Detroit wasn't particularly keen on it. (He had heard an early draft of the album and was brutally honest and not particularly impressed. Caught me off guard. He's blown away now and I know he wouldn't bullshit me. Plus we're too close, I'd see right through him. My biggest supporter and advisor.)  But I want the kids to hear it cuz I think they'll go, 'Yeah. This is what we're trying to tell ya. Ya left us a big fucking mess here with the shootings and the poverty and the high cost of education and the environment. Thanks a fucking bunch assholes' . Or they might just say 'This guy's funny kinda. And it's got a bunch of snappy beats.' Idk what they'll think but I THINK THEY'LL LIKE IT. That's why I wanted you to bring them. And there's a LOT of them. So thanks.

Sure ain't no really good parenting course. When push comes to shove you gotta wing it. Look around, gauge what seems to be working with other parents and kids. Remember how you reacted to shit when you were younger. Cuz there was some stuff you were pretty smart about remember? At 14? Yeah, we've made a bunch of mistakes to get here and we're wiser and more experienced now blah blah blah but there was some stuff, complex stuff I'd venture to say, we had a pretty good bead on at 12, so I always tried to remember that about my kid. These feelings he's feeling at 10 are not 'child like ', they're valid. Mine were. Here's another one I tried to remember: When you hear shit come out of your mouth that sounds like your old man? Yer fucked. Stop that. I mean it's a crap shoot. Seen shitty parents with great kids, great parents with shitty kids. I used to think if you raise a kid and he doesn't slit your throat when yer sleeping then you did a fair job. Again: naive. Cuz Tucker Carlson.
(Chris Rock says there is no report card for parenting. 'But if your daughter on the.pole? You failed!' I actually don't agree with that necessarily, but it was funny when HE said it.)

Yeah. Tucker Carlson. That asshole. When it dawned on me that any child that had been educated correctly, that had been taught not just 'right from wrong ' but the moral responsibility to a greater society, the importance of kindness and empathy, and a fair understanding of history and the causes of fascism, any child that had been raised with global awareness, exposed to other cultures and brilliant minds, had witnessed the importance of tolerance and truth, and taught to see how fragile the experiment of democracy is, were that child to have been parented in such a way and were that child to realize one day that their father was Tucker Carlson, a man who, with the possible exception of Mitch McConnell, has done more to instill hatred and division and to erode democracy than any man in this country, then that child would have no other choice but to sneak into his room at night and slit his father's throat. There would be no other option. That's all I was saying.

Again, recorded with Ruth Theodore in my apartment at 2:00 in the morning. I think we got done watching a movie, The Peanut Butter Falcon if I recall, then we watched this George Carlin thing which she loved then we got talking about Boris Johnson and then she asked me about 'that guy on Fox' and 25 minutes later we had the song written and recorded. Bingo!