Song of the Day 11/3: Connie Francis, “Who’s Sorry Now”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is worried about the forces unleashed by Trump’s unbridled fascism. They’ve been whinging about tariffs for quite a while now, but they’re really riled up about the increasingly naked anti-Semitism on what they call the “new right.”
Oh, now it’s gone too far. Plucking people off the street because they “look Mexican” was OK, because how many of them are there on Wall Street? Same with SNAP benefits and health insurance subsidies – nobody they know is affected. But they know and work with more than a few Red Sea pedestrians, and there’s that hungry leopard staring them in the face. It’s like cable TV – your subscription supports all that bundled content you don’t like. Bunch of bright fellows like them should have read the small print.
The MAGAts aren’t the “new right.” They’re the same reactionary forces the Wall Street Journal has fostered for generations.
This song rescued Connie Francis’ floundering career. As a youngster, Concetta Franconero sang in talent contests, and adopted her stage name at age 13 at the suggestion of Arthur Godfrey, who was sort of the Simon Cowell of his day. But her professional career began with 10 non-charting singles, and her record company was ready to pull the plug.
She was aiming for the teen audience, so when her father suggested she sing a hit from the ’20s she hated the idea. They argued about it in the studio, but with time running out she relented. It looked like another flop until Dick Clark put his thumb on the scale by playing it on “American Bandstand” on New Year’s Day 1958. He predicted it would hit No. 1, which it did in the UK, but topped out at No. 4 in America. It kicked off a string of Top 40 hits, including three No. 1s, that ended only after the British Invasion.
I don’t read the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section because it’s still fairly conservative (you can tell by the headlines), although it’s good to be against true anti-semitism however late the opinion arrives. But the news stories have definitely taken a turn for the better (more liberal but not, of course, progressive). Stories that cover Trump’s outrages instead of burying, distorting or ignoring them.
I can also read these kind of stories in the New York Times, but the Wall Street Journal offers the bonus of a letters to the editor section that still includes posts from outraged longtime Journal readers who don’t like the new direction. However, the letters are now dominated by readers on the liberal side who regularly insult, make fun of and out-think the MAGAt holdovers. I enjoy this very much. In pro-Trump publications nobody pushes back.
I understand WSJ is a mainstream publication (like the Times, but not exactly) and therefore (like the Times) useless or worse to most folks here. Just saying I find reading this kind of thing cathartic.