Friday, February 26, 2016

Don McLean and the High Schoolers


I was never into Don McLean.  By the time his music caught on, I was way past Pop and looking down my nose at anything on the Top Forty hit list.  My music very rarely hit the Top 100.

Regardless, what is now happening to this man pisses me off to no end.  The Heydays of his musical career now well behind him, he and his wife Patrisha have lived quietly normally for the most part since 1984 on the coast of Maine.

Recently, he made news of the domestic violence kind.  There had been some inter relationship dust up between he and his wife, Patrisha.  She claimed abuse and had ole Don arrested.  By the time news leaked out, Patrisha had attempted to withdraw her complaint, but the wheels of justice had been engaged and they needed to run whatever course this kind of case indicates.

Okay, several things worth noting here.
     ~ The word is both Patrisha and Don enjoyed going toe to toe.  Some marriages need the support of an occasional dust up in order to survive.  I watched my parents do it for years.
    ~ This case involves a celebrity so it gets entirely more attention than it deserves.
    ~ The fact that Don has only been arrested and not convicted matters little to the small minded culture we have in this nation.

And now some high school students in Massachusetts have asked that a scheduled concert at Barnstable High School on Cape Cod be canceled.  Calling him a bad role model, or in other words, finding him guilty before the facts have been chewed and spewed by the court system.  So much for the grand American illusion of  "innocent until proven guilty".

Seems to me that since this involves high school students, the civics lesson to reinforce the notion of innocent before guilt has not only been lost, the opposite has been firmly implanted for future use as these dumb ass school children get on with their lives.

How many lives have been ruined over the years because of unfounded allegations, accusations and outright lies that have been allowed and nurtured into reality, while the Truth languishes in the shadows with no one covering its back?

Later ................................................

3 comments:

Ol'Buzzard said...

There is no excuse for a man who strikes a woman; and I know it is not politically correct, but sometimes a man gets shafted by a woman with a grudge. It is not always the man.
the Ol'Buzzard

Nan said...

Don McLean's career has tanked to the point where he's playing at high schools? Poor bastard. . . you know your life has hit rock bottom when you're a geezer and back where you started 50 years earlier.

MRMacrum said...

Ol'Buzzard - No never any excuse for violence. At least there never seems to be a good excuse. But this is more about American Hypocrisy, than domestic abuse.

Nan - I wouldn't spend too much time feeling sorry for Don. He recently sold the original handwritten lyrics to "American Pie" for $1.2 million.