(No, not the band. Sorry.)
I just saw a pretty ridiculous debate about Lady Gaga’s song “Judas” on a TV news program. First of all, the woman who was all mad at Lady Gaga about how “disgusting” this song is didn’t even call her “Lady Gag”. Sorry, but it’s hard to take her seriously after that. Anyway, the silly debate was all about how nasty and insensitive it was of Lady Gaga to release her song, “Judas”, around Good Friday & Easter. After defining the issue and the target, they played a verse of the song, and showed the lyrics up on the screen as it played. What this made clear to me is that this song isn’t about bashing Jesus and celebrating Judas, like they said, but rather, using Jesus and Judas as metaphors for the “nice guy” and “bad boy” types of guys, respectively. So the song is really about her asking herself: “Why am I attracted to the bad boys when they’re such jerks, while I’m repulsed by the nice guys when they’re actually really nice?”* This seems to be a pretty universal issue for young ladies. I have personally had the honor of being dumped for being too nice and also had someone hang onto me when it was clear I was a jerk all in the same month in high school, so I know a little bit about this. I have to admit, I did it as an experiment, so it really works (with a sample size of 2. That’s enough to prove it scientifically, right?). I still don’t understand it, though.
Anyway, rather than notice what the song was actually addressing, one party in this debate just wanted to harp on how offensive it is to make a song called “Judas” and release it around Easter. This argument went all over the place, from asking why Lady Gaga doesn’t try to offend Muslims (referring to the Danish cartoon thing where people were threatened or killed over it), to wondering why we tolerate having it done to Christians. The other half of this grudge-match was trying to make the point that we have freedom of speech here in America, that using Easter to release a song called “Judas” is just a way to get publicity and generate sales in a free-market economy, and that to try to prohibit that sort of thing is tantamount to censorship. (She wins the argument, by the way, if you’re keeping track.) Nobody bothered to mention that Christians are supposed to forgive people, and that perhaps once in a while God with throw a test your way to see if you really live by what you espouse. That kind of crap can ruin a nice heated debate.
The fact is that there are going to be things in this world that offend you. You don’t have to pay attention to them. You can just dismiss it. One comment I heard about this song issue was how could Lady Gaga do such a horrible thing when she was raised in this (Catholic) religion? Well, despite the fact that she totally misread the message of the song, from the part of it they played before the debate, let’s just say for the sake of argument that she was attacking the church intentionally with the song. How dare she express an opinion about a religion she grew up in and knows so much about? Especially if she sees bigotry and corruption in the Catholic faith (I see it too), all the more reason to have to keep quiet and cover it up, right? This is the sort of mentality that led to the whole pedophile scandal and cover-up lasting for so many decades (or, who knows, centuries?).
If you’re not allowed to use your freedom of expression to try to right the wrongs you see, then what’s it good for? Well, righteous indignation for one. Ratings is another, I guess. Oh, and it’s also good for trying to shut down someone else’s free expression. If you’re not trying to do that, then you’re really wasting it. That’s what I say.
* (They only played one verse of the song, so that’s all I’ve got to go by. If this song actually spends the rest of its running time bashing Jesus and Christianity, sorry to have mislead you. I can’t speak to that, since I didn’t hear anything like that. But you’d think that if the song really did do that, they might want to cue up that part so we can see a reason for complaint. And even if it did do the most heinous, offensive indictment imaginable, they’re just giving it free advertising and publicity by showing it and arguing about it. It seems silly to me, but hey, they’re exercising their free speech too. And isn’t it nice we have that right?)
