Stanley, I appreciate your point of view, and believe me, I am sensitive to how people react to my music and I do take that into consideration when structuring my shows. For example, when I play at retirement homes I do not perform Michael Smith's "The Dutchman". Although it's a beautiful song with a poignant message, I take into consideration the fact that many of the folks I may be singing to could be The Dutchman. There are many layers to this discussion, so bear with me - and I do hope you'll respond, because my experience has been that people like you tend to jump out and stab at this "racist" issue and then hide because you have no way to back up your argument. So, understanding that I am sensitive about the particular audience I'm in front of and that I do consider what I perceive may possibly be "offensive" in nature, let me say that I am both an entertainer and a song-writer. That's two different jobs, and I'll address each separately. As an entertainer, my mission is obviously to entertain. I structure my shows based on a certain formula that I've developed over many years of doing this. I know what songs work to open the show and get the audience's attention. I then know how to flow from one song to the next, taking into consideration tempos and subject matter, and I build my show to include emotional peaks and valleys. A lot of this is intuitive, and in the setting of The Atlanta Bread Company, which was a very casual and intimate situation, I relied a lot on reading the mood of the audience. Again, this is intuitive - I look at people as I'm singing, reading body language and facial gestures. After 50 years of doing this, believe it or not, I'm pretty good at it. Taking into account the casual and intimate nature of the ABC gig, I also responded to audience requests. Sometimes people would shout out their requests, sometimes they'd submit them written on a napkin and occasionally written on a hundred dollar bill. (Well, not at The Bread Company). On the particular night when Scott Murphy attended my show (and he wasn't there to see me - he only came with his Starbuck's coffee to use ABC's wifi network - never bought anything), I had about 30 people who were enjoying my show. I knew that by their hearty response with laughter and applause. Now, I will say that I couldn't see Murphy, as he was in a booth that was not in my line of sight. But the majority of the crowd was with me and we were having fun. At one point I was on a roll with some comedy songs and I chose one by David Buskin called "Dog In Taiwan". This is a very cleverly written song that tells about the outlawing of eating dog meat in Taiwan. Such lines as "No more poodle with your noodle or wanton" or "They won't be full of Shitzu from now on" are hilarious in the context of the song. How anyone could interpret this as "racist and offensive" is beyond me. If you'd like to see the full text of the lyric I'd be glad to send it to you so you could point out the "racist" lines to me. Toward the end of the show, several people who have heard "Can You Get Me In?" and "Pizza For Pesos" on the radio and bought my CD's of those songs, requested them. Again, taking into account that I was playing to a sympathetic audience and answering their requests, I had no problem with obliging them. By the way, many of the kitchen staff at that restaurant are Hispanics (some even illegal) and some of them have told me that they enjoy these songs. So are they racists too? And in six months of playing at this place I've never had anyone from the staff, management or clientele object to these songs. I ran through a string of songs I've written about our government's ineffective border control policies - all of them with a humorous slant, by the way - and then I closed my show with a medley of "United States Are We" (a song I wrote on 9/12/01 about the previous day), "This Is My Country" and "God Bless America." Murphy wrote in his complaint letter, "Simply put I was appalled. He finished with 'God Bless America' and had some sort of comment at the very end of his performance that expressed appreciation for free speech and our country." Oh my gosh - how offensive is that?!!! Murphy had three options that night, and he chose the most cowardly of the three: writing a letter and demanding my termination, to which the restaurant sheepishly complied. His other two options would have been (1) to leave (the best option - ya know if you're watching TV and you don't like the program you change channels) or (2) come to me and express his discomfort, to which I would have responded with sympathy. But he chose the cowardly option and to this day has not had the strength of his conviction on the matter to come forth publicly and confront me about this. Please go to Part 2.
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