It’s hard to believe, but a conservative politician is now claiming Twisted Sister as an ally.
Jerrod Sessler, a former NASCAR driver running against Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) in the GOP primary discussed Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider on his Twitter account.
“Bummed to learn that @deesnider, the man with the perfect song written decades ago about the attack on traditional, conservative American values… ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ is riding the train in the wrong direction. How could it be that he sang for us but now fights for them?” he asked.
Hang on there. The Twisted Sister that the PMRC and various conservatives treated as an abomination that was corrupting the youth is now being cited as a courageous defender of the Right and the Conservative Family? Jesus. Have they even listened to the lyrics of the song?
We’ve got the right to choose and
There ain’t no way we’ll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We’ll fight the powers that be just
Don’t pick our destiny ’cause
You don’t know us, you don’t belong
Sure. That’s definitely a Republican anthem. Dee Snider is amused.
You think i wrote a song in support of "traditional American values"? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! You funny. https://t.co/G34e1zcFrC
— Dee Snider🇺🇸 (@deesnider) April 9, 2022
Poor Republicans. In their dreams, Twisted Sister, Bruce Springsteen, and Rage Against the Machine are all playing at their conventions, because they’re incapable of actually listening to the words.
We’ve come so far now that this has become representative of American family values.
In a few days, L7’s 1992 album “Bricks Are Heavy” turns thirty. I’ll bet rightwingnuts view the song “Wargasm” as pro-war and supportive of keyboard culture warriors. 9_9 Fans of the album know where the four women stand on feminism, abortion, and human rights.
(Wikipedia)
“Twisted Sister was an American heavy metal band originally from Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, and later based on Long Island, New York.”
Well, there you go. Live and learn.
“L7 is an American all-female rock band founded in Los Angeles, California, first active from 1985 to 2001 and re-formed in 2014”
Live and learn.
“9_9 means Rolling the eyes.”
Live and learn.
another example of GOP only using the TITLE of a song to think it expresses the GOP view.
!st example I think of is Raygun using Born in the USA for his campaign song, not realizing it is being strongly critical of the damage our nation’s “patriotism” is doing to its citizens under policies Raygun advocated.
blech
About 15 years ago, during Obama’s first campaign, the GOP picked what they thought was the most conservative Rock and Roll song ever. That song, “Won’t get Fooled Again” by the Who. That is a very LIBERAL message. From Terry Pratchett’s “Wee Free Men”
“No King, No Queen, No Master!
We’ll not be fooled again!”
Which side of the political spectrum is leading toward strong man fascism? Which side elevated their leader to demi-godhood? I’ll tell you what, I support Biden, but he’s no hero to me. Does the Left have any heros? Bernie maybe, but even then he’s just doing what’s best. AOC? Best thing about her is she “triggers” all the MAGA-morons so effectively. Trump’s supporters see him as ordained and blessed by god. Biden’s supporters see him as a public servant just doing the job.
re @1
a line from the song makes me relate a piece of trivia:
IE “crocodile tears”
often understood to mean **fake* tears
the trivia is that salt water crocodiles DO tear, as a way to eliminate the salt from their bodies from drinking only salt water.
Not being a biologist I never verified the veracity of that, and scooped it up as a [Did you know…] factoid
I present it here to get corrected or verified.
Thank you.
—–off to google it myself
@5, Perhaps as or even more amusing is thugs since Ronaddled Raygun have also used Born in the USA — including hair furor — surely, by now, they ought to be aware the song isn’t what, or about what, they are seem to “think” it is.
There was also an incident — but now I cannot remember the name or even approximate timeframe — where some frothing-at-the-mouth “media”-type(? fundangelical?) promoted the song(‘s values?), only for his own listeners / followers to point out he had it all wrong.
Well, they still have Dee Dee Ramone and Frank Zappa, neither of whom (IIRC) ever voted Democrat.
The trouble is that those lyrics are so generic, you can appropriate them to any political movement claiming their opposition are domineering tyrants. Currently, the Right is casting the Left as the uptight, maternalistic spoilers of freedom-loving fun; e.g. making people wear masks and lockdowns, silencing their social media accounts for posting racist bullshit, telling them they can’t eat BBQ or cheeseburgers, etc.. Whatever Dee’s original intentions, the fascists own the song now.
Of course, you’re supposed to ignore the book burners, fetus fetishists, and sexually repressed Christian neurotics in the Right’s ranks. Pay no attention to them and sing our stolen anthem of rebellion!
slithey tove@6, Interesting, never heard that before.
Some admittedly quick searching is… somewhat confusing albeit not contradictory. According to Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge:
Notably, that article (which is more about the expression than the animal) does not say where the “tear ducts” are. According to Crocodile Tears:
So apparently, salt water crocodiles do emit highly concentrated salt solutions from… somewhere. There is perhaps also something like tears which apparently has been observed in caimans and alligators (No Faking It, Crocodile Tears Are Real) when feeding, albeit why is unknown. Other sources speculate those eye-watering tears are to keep the eyes moist once the animal has been out on land for awhile.
slithey tove@6, Interesting, never heard that before.
Some admittedly quick searching is… somewhat confusing albeit not contradictory. According to Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge:
Notably, that article (which is more about the expression than the animal) does not say where the “tear ducts” are. According to Crocodile Tears:
So apparently, salt water crocodiles do emit highly concentrated salt solutions from… somewhere. There is perhaps also something like tears which apparently has been observed in caimans and alligators (No Faking It, Crocodile Tears Are Real) when feeding, albeit why is unknown.
slithey tove@6, Interesting, never heard that before.
I have absolutely no idea why, but for some reason, poopyhead’s filter is blocking my comment / reply. So in summary, admittedly quick searching is… somewhat confusing albeit not contradictory. There are highly-concentrated salty tears, possibly from the mouth, to get rid of excess salt. There are also watery tears near the eyes, sometimes seen when feeding, possibly to keep the eyes moist when on dry land.
● Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge
● Crocodile Tears
● No Faking It, Crocodile Tears Are Real
@ 2,3,4 Morales
John, if it saves you time we can just take it as read that you don’t know shit and then you won’t need to publicly announce everything you’ve never heard of before. Nobody cares dude.
Next up, Lauren Boebert adopts the Fugs’ “Kill for Peace” as a campaign anthem.
The real proof that “We’re Not Gonna Take It” isn’t really a pro-conservative anthem came in public testimony a couple of years later, at the behest of the individual who ensured that the 2000 election was very much a case of “Why can’t they both lose?”:
PMRC drove a generation of high school and college students away from politics (above the local leve, anyway)† when it proved that teh kiddies knew more than their betters — nobody took Twisted Sister seriously except the parents. The prune-faced parents with nothing better to do than recall their own wild college days of spinning Pat Boone records and formally excluding anyone with a different ethnicity from their own at Faber College…
† There’s about an eight-year demographic trough in actual elected officials, and in senior-level appointed officials. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
“Crocodile tears” actually comes from an old belief that crocodiles would cry in order to trick victims into thinking the crocodile was sad, then eat them when they came close.
Steppenwolf’s “Monster” is so free of ambiguity that not even the MAGA hats think it is a conservative patriotic song.
.
The Greenland shark handles the osmotic pressure of salt water in a quite different way, I recommend Herr Doktor Wiki for details.
That shark has also an extraordinary life span, possibly longer than any other vertebrate.
.
A fun thing about crocodilians is that they may have regressed to a low-energy, ambush predator lifestyle, their triassic pseudosuchid brethren gave early dinosaurs a run for the money.
re blf @11…
Thanks for filling me in
Just to explain: My comments at @11 and @12 (which are almost identical) were the ones blocked by poopyhead’s filter; as they were blocked, I summarised in @13. I presume poopyhead has unblocked both @11 and @12, hence the apparent multiple posting…
Incidentally, can anyone spot what the filter was objecting to in @11 or @12 ? I remain puzzled. It’s presumably a nasty word embedded in some other word but I don’t see it…
blf @ # 20: … can anyone spot what the filter was objecting to in @11 or @12 ?
The filter rejects salty language in general.
@Jaws, # 16: “Knowledge is good.”
And yet somehow Twisted Sister didn’t make National Review’s list of the 50 most conservative rock songs : https://www.nationalreview.com/2006/06/rockin-right-john-j-miller/
(Which was expertly skewered by Charles Pierce:
https://prospect.org/article/got-fooled/ )
I was skeptical of the Zappa claim until I read up on him. Apparently he considered himself a “practical conservative” which, basically, means he was your typical rich, white Republican who didn’t like taxes. Being an atheist, though, he thought Reagan was a theocrat.
Zappa wanted to tax the churches, and he also wanted a satellite network to circumvent the stranglehold The Moral Majority had on the three TV networks from early 1980s onward to the saturation of cable channels.
Zappa died, but by the time you got HBO some degree of creative freedom from the cultists had returned.
Zappa also was a fierce advocate for voting rights.
Fun story. I remember when “We’re not gonna take it” was released. Dee Snider, when interviewed was asked, “What does your Dad think about the song, the makeup and the outrageous persons?” He replied, “It was disappointing, actually. I took professional vocal training for several years, to the point of singing opera. And then I decided to piss off my Dad; I invented this rock band, put on crazy ambiguous makeup, danced around onstage like loon, and then when the song hit, I went back home to rub my Dad’s face in it.”
But he wasn’t like that at all! I found he’d been going over to all of his friends and bragging about me — ‘Look at my son, the millionaire rock star!'”
If Zappa’s version of conservatism were still alive today, the Repubican Party might have a sliver of decency left.
blf@8– “…surely, by now, they ought to be aware the song isn’t what, or about what, they are seem to “think” it is.”
I’m beginning to suspect this functions the same way as outrageously bad scam emails in that it’s so obviously wrong as to select for all the marks with poor critical awareness. Although in the case of misusing songs, I suspect the demographic being sought is not just the gullible, but also the non-gullible who take joy in angering those who wrote or loved the songs.
Well.. Watching the PMRC video.. He is a, “I don’t do offensive stuff.”, Christian parent, who doesn’t like censorship, but one some level does seem to agree with the “conservative” definitions of at least some parts of their “moral code”. So.. This is absolutely enough for the modern GOP to assume that he is a full blown pro-evangelical…
Arnold Schwarzenegger used “We’re not gonna take it” or his gubernatorial campaign did anyway. Maybe he doesn’t count as a conservative now? I assume it was taxes that he and his supporters weren’t going to “take.” I have mixed feelings about Schwarzenegger, who I like a lot more now, (and voted against and would vote against again). But the song was definitely used for a conservative message.
And in case you don’t remember or don’t believe me: https://top40-charts.com/news.php?nid=5708&cat=
Silentbob @14:
Well, that’s one way (slightly jaundiced, seems to me) to look at it.
Perhaps others (including Intransitive) will notice I paid attention to that comment, and that I looked up stuff I did not know, and was enlightened thereby.
Not perhaps as directly as, say, blf writing “Interesting, never heard that before.”, but it conveys the same sentiment. Or, it should, to those who can nut it out.
Evidently, you personally cared enough to post a comment about it.
(and, hey! You are not nobody, merely wrong)
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) (#7) –
The most accurate lines in the song:
“Wave those flags high in the air / As long as it takes place over there”
I do not appreciate our perfidious pseudo-pedant claiming what I said has the same meaning as what they said, and I especially do not appreciate their assertion that if one does not agree with their interpretation, the disagreeing individuals are wrong. Since I do not agree with their interpretation of what I said, then I am .
FWIW Aussie mining oligarch and perverter of of the course of Democracy former Senator & fake party leader Clive Palmer got fined for using the “We’re Noty Gunna Take iT” song an election or two ago – see :
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/30/clive-palmer-ordered-to-pay-15m-in-damages-for-unauthorised-use-of-twisted-sister-song
Excerpt :
That last bit seems .. improbable.
StevoR@35 I get how the first few notes could be cribbed from Adeste Fideles, but the divergence is pretty fast unless there’s a version that goes:
Maybe if Twisted Sister gets back together they can do a Christmas album. (I’m full of really bad ideas. Don’t get me started.)
I can’t muster a lot of concern about the misuse of “We’re not gonna take it.” It’s trite and non-specific. It’s easy to be a rebel if you have no clear idea of what you’re rebelling against. Anyone can use it (as I said, Ahnold used it about 20 years ago already). It’s fine as entertainment, but not a coherent political statement.