When Shirley Temple Black passed away last week, it reminded us how important entertainment had been to American during the Depression.  It’s easy to mock statements about that impact – “Gosh, I have no job, no food, and I’m about to get evicted from my tenement, but I don’t care as long as I can watch a curly-haired moppet sing & dance!” – but good songwriting does have the power to connect with our emotions.  (Which are not always positive – after my boyfriend dumped me on my 22nd birthday, I wrote a country revenge ballad titled “You Broke My Heart, So Now I Want To Break Your Legs” . . . but I digress.)

There does seem to be a correlation between economic woes and music.  The Depression was the heyday of big silly musicals, but it also led to classic songs like “Brother Can You Spare A Dime,” and even the dippy cheerfulness of “We’re In The Money” starts with an incredibly ironic celebration of finding – gasp – a quarter!  During the uproar of the 60s, the folk revival turned to protest songs (as embodied by Pete Seeger, another recent loss to the music world).  That was also the birth of tongue-in-cheek comedy, including The Smothers Brothers.  (If you haven’t heard their rendition of “John Henry” or “Streets of Laredo,” you’re in for a treat!, thanks to youTube.)

So with partisanship and income inequality at all-time highs today, you’d think we’d see yet another form of hard-times-inspired entertainment.  Of course, trends are hard to see from within, so it will be a few years before we know whether this era is defined by bubbly escapism (“Gangnam Style,” anyone?), innocuous boy bands like One Direction, or a series of revenge songs penned by Taylor Swift about her various celebrity breakups.  However, in the meantime I’ll offer my own contribution to protest songs, 2014-style . . . “The $10.10 Blues.”

Sure, I envy rich people – most of us do, if we’re honest.  But usually I don’t begrudge them their wealth – I can admire their accomplishments, aspire to be like them, or just enjoy the fact that if it weren’t for rich people giving parties & hiring bands, most musicians I know would be even more under-employed.  (What’s the difference between a musician and a savings bond? The savings bond eventually matures and makes money.  Cue rim-shot.)

Of course, there have always been those hideous examples of gross over-consumption or bad behavior that can give wealth a bad rap.  (You know, the CEOs with gold-plated toilet seats in their private bathrooms, the jewel-encrusted socialite who owes her maid back pay, the wealth congresspeople who vote to pay themselves hundreds of thousands in farm subsidies.)  Other rich people can be counted on to put them in their place with a throaty “How vulgar,” like Cyd Charisse’s character’s reaction to seeing a ‘talking picture’ at a party in Singing In The Rain.  (I once played at a very expensive country club, where one of the drunken members was trying to make suggestive remarks to me – at least as far as one could understand his slurring.  I was trying to put him off politely, not wanting to be rude to a client, but a lovely silver-haired dowager heard him and told him in no uncertain terms to do something anatomically impossible to himself.  That’s the kind of rich person I want to be! . . . but I digress)

These days, of course, income inequality is all the rage – probably because income inequality is at levels not seen since the Gilded Age.  Naturally, one might expect the very richest people to feel a bit under siege, but they don’t help themselves when they make public comments about unemployment insurance just encouraging people to be lazy, or feeling just like Jews in Nazi Germany.  (Note of advice to Tom Perkins – unless you’re Jewish and have relatives who are Holocaust survivors, that is not a very good idea.  Nor is it smart to defend your remarks while bragging about a $380,000 watch that is ‘worth a 6-pack of Rolexes.)

But I’m not jealous of Tom Perkins – in fact, I’m grateful to  him for inspiring my next song (which is my way of saying to him what that kind dowager said to the boor who was bothering me . . . )

We’ve all been guilty of it – the inside-out logic of deliberate self-delusion, to try to convince ourselves of something we really wish were true, such as

– “I’ll get there on time as long as I hit every light and there’s no traffic”

– “I can quit drinking/smoking/bingewatching Downton Abbey whenever I want”

– “If you eat leftover dessert standing up, it doesn’t have any calories”

– “How can global warming be real if it’s snowing?”

So I’d like to give the GOP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their objection to extending longterm unemployment benefits, spearheaded by Senator Rand Paul. His explanation is one of the all-time classic inside-out rationalizations, “Extending benefits does a disservice to the unemployed.”  See, they’d be out looking for a job, even though there are 3 unemployed people for every available job, except that $200 weekly check is making them way too comfy, and so they’ll be grateful for the kick in the pants they need to go out and get a job that doesn’t exist.

And let’s assume their objection is also out of concern for the economy – even though most economists say that every dollar in unemploment benefits adds more than a dollar to the economy (because unemployed people will spend the money on frivolous items like food, housing and utilities), and even though the shutdown last fall cost just about the same as extending benefits would.  It’s just that in Rand Paul land, up means down, and numbers work backwards.  (Either that, or he’s too busy footnoting every single word he says, so that we mean liberals won’t accuse him of plagiarizing again.)

In that spirit, I’m only likening Paul to a certain Seussian green-skinned character because they’re both so cuddly and cute!