Song of the Day 8/19: The Beatles, “Piggies”

Given all the classless acts on Donald Trump’s record, calling a female reporter “piggy” would seem to rank on the low end of the scale, the kind of low-level insult he doles out routinely. But it hasn’t landed that way.

Maybe it’s the way the Epstein files are exposing the misogyny among America’s self-styled elite, or a reaction to Trump’s weakening grip on power, but the backlash across the media has been unusually fierce, particularly among women, who saw that the only pig on Air Force One was Trump himself.

George Harrison’s bit of social commentary about the consuming class, for instance, seems a perfect description of Trump and his ilk. He caught a fair amount of flak for it, especially after Charles Manson thought it directed him to kill the rich. Others were offended that he took an axe rather than a rapier to his subject. But some people rather liked it.

Harrison got a little help on the lyrics from his mother, who contributed the line “What they need’s a damn good whacking!” when he was stuck on a rhyme, and from John Lennon, who suggested the last line.

Harrison’s demo for the song long made the bootleg rounds before its release on the band’s Anthology 3 compilation in 1996. It features the original last line.