Rant #2,921: Our House

My allergies are still not helping me too much.
 
Today appears to be better than yesterday, but my left side is still bothering me, my teeth continue to hurt a bit, and I am still blowing my nose quite a lot.
 
So goes the allergy curse … I have learned to live with it for more than 65 years now, and it won’t get any better during the next 65 years, so I am resigned to the fact that this is the way I am, and that is how it is going to be.
 
How did you spend your Juneteenth holiday?
 
I was a bit off with the allergies, so I digitized some of my newly purchased records from Record Store Day on this past Saturday.
 
One of the acts that I digitized was the old rock/pop/ska act Madness, who you might remember had that one big American hit nearly 40 years ago with “Our House.”
 
Yes, “madness” ruled the roost yesterday, or so it appeared.
 
I noticed that the TV networks did their usual “outstanding” job in turning the other way so as not to offend people, and they certainly took this stance on Juneteenth.
 
Locally and nationally, CBS News dropped the ball—and fed into the politically correct, woke hole that they have dug for themselves—by leading off their coverage of the day with a taxi accident that happened in mid-Manhattan, itself a terrible tragedy, but one that paled in comparison with the story that they should have led off their coverage with—
 
That being a mass shooting in Harlem, where an up-and-coming basketball star was fatally gunned down for no apparent reason.
 
Several other people had their bodies riddled by bullets from a still-unknown shooter, but they are supposedly gong to be OK, akin to getting bit by hungry mosquitoes, or so the news wants you to believe, so as to not upset people.

In fact, when the coverage of that shooting incident was finally covered about 10 minutes or so into the network's Evening News broadcast, they went right into--and I mean right away--their initial coverage of the festivities of Juneteenth, as if the shooting were part of those festivities.
 
Now what is worse, an unfortunate cab accident, where the racial identities of the people involved—including the driver—had nothing to do with anything, or a mass shooting in one of the most well-known and traditional black neighborhoods in the country … but on Juneteenth, we know what the media considers to be more important by the way they handled the two stories.
 
Enough about Juneteenth already, and that goes for me, too. Sometimes you create your own oppression, and it is just so easy to dump it on others, in particular when the current narrative, the accepted narrative, is to do jus that.
 
Let’s go back to Madness—not the word, but the band—and their hit “Our House.”
 
It is funny how the song’s lyrics kind of resonate all these years later, but they do in a funny way.
 
Here, according to the AZ Lyrics web site (https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/madness/ourhouse.html), are the lyrics to “Our House”:
 
“Father wears his Sunday best
Mother's tired she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister's sighing in her sleep
Brother's got a date to keep
He can't hang around
 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
 
Our house it has a crowd
There's always something happening
And it's usually quite loud
Our mum she's so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down
And a mess is not allowed
 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
 
Our house, in the middle of our street
(Something tells you)
(That you've got to get away from it)
Our house, in the middle of our
 
Father gets up late for work
Mother has to iron his shirt
Then she sends the kids to school
Sees them off with a small kiss
She's the one they're going to miss
In lots of ways
 
[Instrumental Interlude]
 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
 
I remember way back then when
Everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time
Such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play
Simply waste the day away
Then we'd say
Nothing would come between us
Two dreamers
 
Father wears his Sunday best
Mother's tired she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister's sighing in her sleep
Brother's got a date to keep
He can't hang around
 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street”
 
That middle portion of the lyrics is what gets me:
“I remember way back then when
Everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time
Such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play
Simply waste the day away
Then we'd say
Nothing would come between us
Two dreamers”
 
I wish it was like that today.
 
Situations that we have created for ourselves have come between us, making the chasm that much wider between Americans.
 
We have to get back to the old ways, because the new ways are NOT progressive, they are regressive, and yes, oppressive.
 
Let’s get back to “Our house, in the middle of our street.”
 
The current way of doing things is destroying us, piece by piece, person by person, American by American.