Given the rise of neo-patriarchy, especially in the Republican Party, which keeps trying to control women’s bodies and put women in their (subordinate place), Lesley Gore has issued a public service announcement to the tune of her 1964 hit single, “You don’t Own Me.” The song went to no. 2 at the Billboard charts, just behind the Beatles’ “I want to hold your Hand.”
Lesley Gore laments that women are still fighting the same battles they were when she recorded the song in 1963 at age 17, a time when John F. Kennedy was president, there were no women in the cabinet, there were no women undergraduates at Princeton, there were no female news anchors, contraception was still illegal in states such as Connecticut, and there were no women CEOs of major corporations.
The video notes Republican plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, to defund Planned Parenthood, and in general to hurt institutions that support women’s well-being and choice.
Middle East Trivia: The mid-1960s French version of “You Don’t Own Me,” “Je ne sais plus,” was sung both by Gore and the Egyptian-born artist Dalida, a major figure in Egyptian and French popular music.
Actually, the best version belongs to Tracey Ulmann.
Ullman.
No way, the best version is definitely Klaus Nomi’s.
I dunno, I always preferred the original. Something about 16 year old vocal chords. Only a teenager could ever have written it with that much passion.
It was great to hear that old classic again. I remember it well. Today, it has even more meaning than it did in 1964 – 48 years ago, and Republicans want to take the country back, full speed ahead, and just keep going into the past. Restore the patriarchy, get back to empire building, and institute a theocracy. Make everyone a peasant but the top .0001%.
President Obama hit it out of the ballpark when he observed that Gov Romney has the foreign policy of the 1980s, the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s. Tragically, it appears that half of the American electorate likes this just fine.
Whenever I hear these “slips,” where GOP’s say what they really think about women and their place, I think of the Grand-Daddy of them, when Clayton Williams, the darling of the GOP to replace Anne Richards as Texas Gov in 1990, was caught on tape saying what he really though, saved here for posterity here:
link to videocafe.crooksandliars.com
In the fall-out from his gaff…which Anne quickly took to the Bank…all Clayton could say was that it was a joke. The only lesson these guys ever really take away from these episodes is to not get caught next time. Of course, there are some, like this guy Mourdock, who may come to say thing again as a point of pride, belief, or as a way to tap into a constituency.
But Williams, years later, never could understand why people got so upset with him.
One version is on YouTube (and I couldn’t see the version on GLOBALGRIND.COM perhaps due to using LINUX O/S).