Baby It’s Cold Everywhere, Not Just Outside

One of my favorite cartoonists whom I follow on Facebook has expanded out of his usual ‘see the beauty and uplifting truth in life and nature’ themes, to more hardball politics occasionally, just like the rest of the country who have gone mad with meanness and never mind whose feelings get hurt. His theme this week, like many of the posters on Facebook and around the insta-toot social media world, is on the brou-ha-ha about the song, Baby, Its Cold Outside by Frank Loesser in 1944, and now including me. The cartoonist referred to people on one side of the argument as, overly sensitive, or something like that, and once I saw that character – I think I could not see another thing – certainly not clearly. I don’t have the exact quote, I just can’t look.

That upset me, to think this wholesome cartoonist had thought folks overly sensitive if they were hurt over this song. But the upset over this song has been going on for a lot longer than this current social media craze. That song has irked and hurt me more than 40 years. I used to sing badly all those years ago, but I would not sing that song at all. Sure this is a MeToo thing but this is also long before the idea one could mention being a MeToo anything. The upset over this song is older than Facebook. Folks thinking this only has something to do with any new trends of being politically correct is wrong.

I will add, I am at a loss to say was I as much upset with the cartoon as I was floored by the comments. I saw, I read and I assigned blame but how could anyone be upset at those who do object to the song but in the comments I was no longer reading this friendly group of folks who see the best in life, but many comments were harsh and almost like some were condoning this new treatment of each other.

I posted a comment on the cartoon and wish now I had kept a copy of what I wrote before I deleted it. I now can’t be sure was I too harsh myself in my quick reply. I wrote something to the effect of, I was thinking as I was shaking, adrenaline rushing, blood pressure rising in fear over the memories of a smelly drunk so’n’so pushing himself on you, after incapacitating you, one way or another.

One guy quickly commented on my thoughts with ‘Debbie Downer’. That is rich being that date rape drugs are downers,

Then a lady added a comment to the cartoon, something to the effect of, “anyone that would be seduced to a song, by a song”, or something, “would have been seduced anyway”, – or, “wanted to be seduced…’ something like that.

That did it, boo hoo betty choked up in tears – Oh my G-d the adrenalin rush of rage and fury in fear over the ugly, shallow, inconsiderate, unfeeling, mean comments – with the age old, “…must have asked for it…”

The song speaks of being drugged – like with a Mickey Finn, and notes the drug taking effect – “…Say, What’s In This Drink?…”

The drug’s effects turn the self into mush and quickly create the inability to remain in control and then quickly the person becomes unconscious. Maybe folks do not know all the words of the song or this added meaning.

The oldest of the hypnotic (sleep inducing} depressants, chloral hydrate was first synthesized in 1832. Marketed as syrups or soft gelatin capsules, chloral hydrate takes effect in a relatively short time (30 minutes) and will induce sleep in about an hour. A solution of chloral hydrate and alcohol constituted the infamous “knockout drops” or “Mickey Finn.” Chloral Hydrate has a very limited use today.

https://www.streetdrugs.org/chloral-hydrate/

It will work faster than that with a handful – I know.

I know all about Mickey Finn’s, or rather using Chloral-hydrate in conjunction with alcohol to cope with a rapist I was once married to. It did not stop the assaults and I was just as sore the next day as I would have been if awake but at least I was knocked out. All too often I had days where I was sorry I woke up.

Learning about the medical knock-yourself-out uses for semi-comatose suicidal tendencies, I can tell you if someone — especially someone not really accustomed to hardball drug intake — was slipped one unbeknownst, it is confusing and incapacitating but you can’t fight it – the person is taken away and not in any condition to consent to anything.

Years later, I was stuck living in a crack neighborhood at the height of the area collapsing to crime and drugs. It took months of begging police then lawyers and then police again before I got away. I had lots of medical sympathy and large prescriptions of the little green gel footballs and loads of scotch to drown my sorrows and knock myself out. To this day I have flashbacks and wonder? Maybe I died then and these last years are purgatory? But I knew how to get through that time with a powerful sedative-downer combo to survive.

So this lady commenting on the wholesome cartoonist’s political cartoon says, folks “ask for it”.

The cartoon certainly stirred up a lot of folks. One lady saying she was surprised or something how much controversy came up over the song. Since there are millions of searches now over the current story it is difficult to find obscure ages old stories about the song’s negative past – but I will not stop looking. I think there might have even been problems with censors for the movie when it came out.

I had added in my comment how this kind of acceptance of this kind of behavior is part of the rampant sexually transmitted disease epidemic in the country – more young people with STDs than the rest of the world for many states – particularly the ages 15-25 age bracket. Google it. This song also represents the idea of how encounters like this could be part of the countless children placed for adoptions and who now search for their families, and part of why there are countless people taking DNA tests for genealogy and finding out they are not who they thought they were, or for many abortions for those who could not stand to have a child the product of rape.

Women and men have committed suicide who can no longer cope with the torment of living through rape. For some they have lived through it but cannot survive it and get over it, forever damaged. I am one of the lucky ones, I lived, survived and got past it.

But this time of the year the song and its meaning are especially impacting. The act of drugging to incapacitate and then imposing will over someone, and if they wish to stay safe and warm from weather they will have to choke it up and pay with their body.

And the wholesome cartoonist thinks some folks are overly sensitive and one of his followers thinks the person was asking for it…?

Then I stopped to breathe. I was called on my view and I looked at the cartoon again as I was asked to do and I see the signs each character has and see this next layer of deep thought  – the cartoonist has called out the wrong as well. But I am and will remain hysterical about that song, those experiences, and moreover the comments, maybe like my words here – written in haste.

I wonder about the origins of the song’s controversy, this time around, a Facebook ad for the infamous Revolution News page or just a troll with an idea? Where ever it came from, it has captured the imagination of a few of us and drug up new perspectives and old wounds.

Listening to the morning news and checking Facebook to see who died over night were light reads at one time for the morning coffee. Now, most days I try to shift my schedule – get the day done, the work sorted, and keep the thoughts your own, and turn on the boob tube and nutty net after lunch.

The cartoonist is touching life more and more – reaching farther into our everyday lives with his words and cartoons. Life is not always wholesome but he certainly touches nerves.

But, I will protest with all my might – I am not overly sensitive – so that cartoon hit me squarely – I took that one on the chin.

“…The Mickey Finn is most likely named after the manager and bartender of the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden Restaurant, which operated in Chicago from 1896 to 1903, on South State Street in the Chicago Loop neighborhood.^[2][3][4] In December 1903, several Chicago newspapers document that a Michael “Mickey” Finn managed the Lone Star Saloon and was accused of using knockout drops to incapacitate and rob some of his customers.^[5][6][7][8] Moreover, the first known written example of the term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary(OED), is in 1915, which was 12 years after his trial and lends credence to this theory.

The first popular account of Mickey Finn was given by Herbert Asbury in his 1940 book Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. His cited sources are Chicago newspapers and the 1903 court testimony of Lone Star prostitute “Gold Tooth” Mary Thornton. Before his days as a saloon proprietor, Mickey Finn was known as a pickpocket and thief who often preyed on drunken bar patrons. The act of serving a Mickey Finn Special was a coordinated robbery orchestrated by Finn. First, Finn or one of his employees (including “house girls”) would slip chloral hydrate into the unsuspecting patron’s drink.^[9] The incapacitated patron would be escorted or carried into a back room by one of Finn’s associates, who would then rob him and dump him in an alley. The victim would wake up the next morning in a nearby alley and would remember little or nothing of what had happened.

Finn’s saloon was ordered to be closed on December 16, 1903. He was apparently arrested again in 1918, this time for running an illegal bar in South Chicago.^[10]…”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Finn_(drugs)

The song was always about Mickey Finns

The shoe is on both feet with this music mix. But no getting around drugging the person you want.

Women’s health

https://www.womenshealth.gov/a-z-topics/date-rape-drugs

One in Six

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2015/11/18/rape-on-college-campuses-nearly-1-in-6-freshmen-women-are-assaulted

One of the newspaper accounts of Michael “Mickey” Finn

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10071214/

All that said: If you are going to listen to the song then listen to the best…

The song’s film has a history as well and back to the days of censors these stories and their songs show the evolution of the country and Hollywood becoming more and more liberal.

“…“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was used in the film because MGM’s censors decided that the lyrics of Loesser’s song “I’d Love to Get You (On a Slow Boat to China)” were too suggestive. (Which explains its presence in a film that takes place in sweltering heat.)

This is ironic, since “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has lyrics that are more more suggestive than the lyrics of “I’d Love to Get You (On a Slow Boat to China).” Parts of the song even border on suggesting date rape, an aspect of the song that was recently satirized by Key & Peele…”

Neptune’s Daughter (May 22, 1949)

Here is all about DNA for genealogy and how you can test yourself and others to establish kinship – this is all the sales and places and ways –

DNA Tests ~ All I Want For Christmas, Thanksgiving, Bodhi, Milad un Nabi, Hanukkah, Diwali, Solstice Is A DNA Test Or Two Or Three.

2012 – Key and Peel

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/btjecx/key-and-peele-just-stay-for-the-night

2015 Washington Post parody with SNL – doing Bill Cosby – and several others including Jimmy Fallon

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/entertainment/5-baby-its-cold-outside-parodies/2015/12/21/9767cb9e-a7f8-11e5-b596-113f59ee069a_video.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1b3941402d8