Mr. Loaf was 74. Mr. Loaf’s main collaborator, songwriter/producer Jim Steinman, just died a few months ago.
The first Bat out of Hell album is one of the top-selling albums in history (14 million or more)
I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), from Bat II, reached #1 on the singles chart in 28 countries.
Mr. Loaf’s real name was Marvin Aday, but he changed it because he wanted to make it on his own rather than riding on the coattails of his brother, One, the famous vitamin magnate.
By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that Mr. Loaf left behind instructions that he should be stuffed and mounted, like Trigger the Wonder Horse. And I should know. I started the rumor.
That reminds me of the grief and shock I felt after that one episode of Roy Rogers where Trigger the Wonder Horse stomped Bullet the Wonder Dog to death.
Apparently there is a lot of jealousy in the wonder beast community.
Look, not speaking ill of the dead is a good rule to apply to ordinary people who have died, especially immediately afterward. That is no time to point out their flaws. I suppose the worse a person was, though, the less that rule applies. There’s a difference between petty flaws and major ones that injure others.
Not speaking ill of the dead is a decent rule for celebrities, too, although once again, if their flaws extended to taking public stands in favor of evil things, like racism or anti-vaccination, once again, the less the rule applies. IMO, at least. (Obviously, this whole post is IMO.)
But it is a stupid rule for major public figures, particularly those in political life. Sure, one does not want to be petty, but if they were bad, what good purpose is served by saying they were not? Yes, being truthful is painful to those that loved them, but if they had a long career of harming people, that needs to be said anyway.
Maybe this was once not the case. But we are in a new era now, more similar to the period from 1845 to 1860 than any other I can think of, and while spitefulness serves no purpose, the truth certainly does when it comes to public actions.
Sadly, after dispensing with Bullet, Trigger the Wonder Horse tried to mount Buttermilk the Other Wonder Horse and was run down in a jealous rage by Nellybelle the Wonder Jeep
To be fair, Nellybelle’s road rage was understandable. She had just been left at the altar by Eugene the Wonder Jeep.
Frankly, there are just not that many matrimonial options for Wonder Jeeps.
I like to remember the couple in their happy youth.
Well, in Eugene the Wonder Jeep’s defense, it was Tuesday and he had to gladly collect on Wimpy’s hamburger debts
Got me to thinkin’ …
It’s a shame that the Popeye cartoons were so formulaic. I loved them when I was a kid, but when I grew up I realized what had been missing. The original Thimble Theater comic strip was full of fanciful plots and marvelous supporting characters.
Popeye was always muttering under his breath. On my neglected list is to binge watch the old cartoons just to hear what I missed as a kid
He thought the vaccine was ‘control’ and he said he preferred dying to being under control. I’m happy for him he got what he wanted, however, he didn’t care about others that he might have infected do to his selfishness and stupidity.
I only speak for myself, and I certainly won’t miss this stupid, selfish trash.
I also don’t care for these ‘weren’t they wonderful’ public eulogies. No, Meat Loaf was stupid and selfish and the world is a slightly better place without him.
Yeah I remember Reagan died on a Saturday. You’d always want to get the Sunday paper (because it had the TV guide which was like a hardcopy version of…never mind, I sound like Grandpa Simpson) and that time I grabbed the early Saturday edition and the checker said, Don’t you want the new one? I almost went off on how it would be full of bullshit about Reagan being some kind of good guy.
But it was ever thus. Just watch when Kissinger finally croaks it’ll be all “beloved public figure” this and “Nobel Peace Prize winning” that.
If there’s anything worse it’s how suddenly when someone dies everyone retroactively becomes their close pal.
I think what’s behind this is legacy building. The media owners expect that if they only say good things when a person dies that only good things will be said about them when they die, and for them, that’s important because they tend to be concerned about their legacies, being public figures and all (even if behind the scenes.)
It wouldn’t surprise me if the journalists feel the same thing. I think I was watching the CBC or somewhere where they said that it’s part of the official journalistic practice code to minimize or gloss over the negatives in public obits/eulogies.
This doesn’t seem to be the case in the U.K. I engaged in a debate over the Olympics with somebody who was pro Olympics, and I read a U.K newspaper obit on former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, and they didn’t hesitate to point out his obscene corruption, entitlement and fascist beliefs. (Literally fascist in this case since Samaranch was a high ranking member of Franco’s Falange Party.)
This surprised me a little since the best mocking of these ‘weren’t they wonderful?’ public eulogies was from the 1980s British television show Not the 9 O’Clock News.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1dmFwDFnKI (Yes, that is Rowan Atkinson of Mr Bean)
In regards to Kissinger. There was an old time radio play that I’ve been trying to find (I forget if it was Suspense or another one) that did a take on Judas Iscariot in the (then) present World War II as a man who couldn’t die, but was punished to go through on for eternity as a man who had to betray other people. I think that’s who Henry Kissinger is.
I am not sure if is a rule of politeness or just a superstition, but I’ve heard many people say it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. I think it’s probably true that few if any “evil” people think of themselves as evil. Personally, I think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president in my lifetime. I know for a fact that a very large percentage of this country agree with me about that. Given that, and given that group of people would be mourning his death, it seems the decent thing to do not to attack him and cause those people greater pain.
In my opinion, the greatest threat facing the United States is the inability of so many people to disagree without demonizing their opponents. You may disagree with Reagan’s policies, but that doesn’t make Reagan evil. I disagree with many of the policies pursued by Clinton, Obama, and Biden, but that doesn’t mean I think any of them are evil. I think they are doing what they think is best for this country and the world. I just think they are mistaken and/or value certain things more or less than I do (e.g. equality of outcomes).
The only president I would consider truly evil is Trump. I think his evil was more venial than mortal, right up until he refused to concede the election. But Trump’s refusal actually reinforces my point. If there weren’t so many Republicans demonizing Democrats, there would be far fewer Republicans supporting Trump. People who have convinced themselves that the other side winning an election is the end of the world are far more likely to break rules (both written and unwritten) to prevent that from happening. Trump made this phenomena far worse than it had been, but I think he accelerated a trend that preexisted him, or at least his political career.
“It’s wrong to speak ill of the dead.”
Like Hitler.
Lovely fellow.
Like anything else there are exceptions that prove the rule. Some people are evil nearly anyway you look at them. But it is very rare for someone to be quite as evil as Hitler. It shouldn’t have to be said, but not even Trump is quite in Hitler’s league. My biggest problem with people comparing mainstream Republicans to Hitler and the Nazis is that Hitler and the Nazis come out of that comparison somewhat rehabilitated. If X Republican is as bad as Hitler but I know that X Republican isn’t all that bad, well maybe that means Hitler wasn’t all that bad. You might think that it would be impossible to think that. But I can tell you from experience that a lot of young people are poor students of history. A related problem is that when you have a politician you believe actually has fascist leanings, calling them a fascist just doesn’t have the power it would if it hadn’t been used against every other Republican.
I can’t believe I should have to say this to an educated man, but exceptions don’t prove rules, they disprove them.
Oh Trump is in Hitler’s league all-motherfucking right. He’s a huge Hitler fan, wants to come to power without winning a legitimate election just like Hitler. If he’s actually done less evil so far, that is only a result of his incompetence. He’s ugly, orange, tiny-handed, fat, stupid, has never worked a day in his life. But if he drops dead tonight, I’ll say nice things about him. Not sure what; I’ll think of something.
You could use Hunter Thompson’s eulogy for Richard Nixon as a template. Sadly for America, Richard Nixon now seems like a pretty great guy in comparison.
1.In terms of ‘speaking ill of the dead.’ I don’t know how much impact it has, maybe everybody really knows that these ‘weren’t they wonderful?’ public eulogies really are bullshit, but they annoy me so I go out of my way to push back on them when they really annoy me.
2.I certainly don’t think those on the right had any trouble criticizing Fidel Castro or saying they were happy on the day that he died, and I agreed with them.
3.In regards to Satan Ronnie, I disagree. I think there are a lot of older people 60+ who are still Reagan fans, but for most others, I don’t agree. There are many younger people say under 30 or under 40 especially who recognize that it’s Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation that have gotten the U.S into the Gilded Age that it’s in now. This is not just those on the left, many Trump supporters blame Reagan’s deregulation for starting the deregulation that has led to the supposed high tech discrimination against conservatives.
Even more than that, Trump in 2016 pulled off an amazing feat of tying Hillary Clinton to President Reagan. The argument went, as I’m sure many remember, ‘Hillary Clinton is part of the neoliberal establishment that has governed the United States for the last nearly 40 years, from Reagan to Obama.’ This was an especially effective argument in the small population counties.
Attacking the dead is like attacking a quadriplegic, because …
it’s fun!
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(Also because they can’t strike back, which makes it even better.)
‘Demonizing’ is your term. I think many people don’t argue in good faith or behave intellectually honestly. So, you can call it ‘demonizing’ if you like, but given these, it’s pointless to take their arguments on face value. So, if either outright or implicitly calling them a liar is ‘demonizing’ them, then they deserve it.
I think lying happens to be especially frequent on the political right, though not exclusively. But, if you are going to deny that, I think the evidence is very strong that you would have to be engaging in false equivalence to do so.
I think a major part of that is the talk radio platform that goes back to Rush Limbaugh starting in 1988 and then to Fox ‘News’ starting in 1996. As I’ve said before, Rush Limbaugh did not start out explicitly lying, I listened to him on occasion in 1988-1989. My biggest problem listening to him then wasn’t that he lied, it was that I thought he was a tiresome gasbag and I couldn’t understand how anybody could listen to him for more than 15 minutes a day, yet alone for 4 hours.
However, back then, and what made him tiresome was he didn’t lie or tell the truth. He made very broad right wing statements that weren’t either falsifiable or verifiable. I assume that he stumbled into lying by accident, that one day, he said something that was verifiably false and noticed that he wasn’t called out on it and he took off from there.
What I don’t know is if the left doesn’t have this platform because it hasn’t assembled the mechanism for it, or if those on the left in aggregate are simply less willing to accept intellectual dishonesty. To simply assume that there is no difference between those on the left and those on the right because ‘we’re all humans’ might also be to engage in false equivalence. There certainly are a number of psychological research papers that show fairly stark differences in attitudes, though, and I don’t think this is surprising either, those furthest on the left, Bernie Sanders supporter types, have at least some attitudes more in common with those on the right than with those on the center left.
No, but there are a large number of people who were fans of the newly dead who do fight back. There are also a fairly large number of ‘civility’ types who ‘tut tut’ speaking ill of the newly dead.
Speaking of TV Guide, today I learned the magazine is still being published?? That blows my mind given that Playboy, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, etc. couldn’t survive.
Do newspapers still print their own TV guides?
Wait – newspapers still exist?
From what I read he was an anti-vax nut who died of covid. His own vaccination status is unknown currently, but he sided with fellow misguided lunatics Van Morrison & Eric Clapton, protesting lockdowns & minimizing covid, as well as strongly criticizing the Aussie government about their policies. Good guess he wasn’t vaccinated and paid the ultimate price. Reminds me of a Howard Stern quote: “A deadly virus arrives, a vaccine is developed… and you don’t want it. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Once, far down a comment thread, I found a convincing-enough argument that the “that” in “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is anal.
Actually, I think Steinman explained that they have made a mistake in the lyrics, that they should have said “and I won’t do that,” which would have made the intent clearer.
Mr. Loaf thought it was clear enough:
Or anal. Anal works.
Or vaccinate
Sadly, that is the correct answer. He wouldn’t do that.
Personally, I am quite content to let the real explanation of “that” to be a mystery. That said (excuse the pun), I don’t think replacing “but” with “and” would have cleared up things. My guess is that the first line that was written with “that” made sense and sounded good so they decided to use it everywhere.
PS: In case you haven’t seen them, do check out these ads:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbwIPmPfpgk
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“Don’t let your meat loaf.” – Frank Zappa