We've watched over the last couple of weeks how easy it is to get smeared by your long-time association with people that say and do things with which you may disagree. By that standard, I guess we can say that most of us are pot smoking, child molesting, anti-Americans.
“Puff the Magic Dragon”
Puff the Magic Dragon is one of the most beloved songs of my childhood. Of course, I was just about the right age in the early 70's to hear songs like that. Now, I never thought the song was about anything other than little Jackie and his pet magic dragon, but over the years since then the song has become a well known drug reference song, despite the alleged intentions of the authors.
I know most of the words and have sung it to my own child, but now with the advent of guilt by association, I'm afraid I'm going to have to throw ole Puff under the train.
The Dragon
The problems with “Puff the Magic Dragon” are multitudinous. First of all, the song is an obvious reference to drug use and contains several lines that can be construed as promoting drug usage. In fact, the song uses a little boy as the name for the “papers” that potheads use to roll marijuana cigarettes. A child!!! Imagine my horror upon learning this and then realizing that my long term association with “Puff” could lead to my being labeled a contributor to the delinquency of children.
It gets way worse. Apparently, the dragon's very name is a reference to smoking pot. I certainly do not want to be linked to that in this day and age. Plus, I never want to sing the song again to my own child. He, due to his lifetime of association with me, can now be linked through me to this song. And it keeps getting worse.
The Band
Not only is the song itself a problem, but there is a huge problem with the people that wrote and performed the song. Peter Yarrow, the “Peter” in “Peter, Paul and Mary” is a known subversive, child molester and anti-American. It's true. He was convicted in 1970 of taking “improper liberties” with a 14 year old, although he was later pardoned by that well known anti-American hate monger President Jimmy “Peanut” Carter.
Further, he was heavily involved in the treasonous and anti-American peace movement against the war in Vietnam in the 1960's. He was so involved; he led and organized the infamous 1969 anti-war “March on Washington”. If marching against your nation's capital with a half million other traitors, pinko symps and hippies isn't treasonous then I don't know what is.
We know for sure that he was anti-American and a commie sympathizer because he married that well known coward and pro-communist Eugene McCarthy's niece. And it isn't like Yarrow is the only unpatriotic anti-American in the band either. But, their association with him is enough to let me know that they can't be good people either.
And the associations just keep coming. Apparently, Noel “Paul” Stookey, the “Paul” in this troupe of America haters, had a lot to do with founding the nascent “Jesus Music” movement in the late "60"s. So much of what the contemporary singers and songwriters in this category of America hating music devils is owed to Paul that due to his association with the child molesting, pot smoker Peter, I have to destroy all of my Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant recordings. They have to be tainted by association as well.
Verdict: Guilty
So, there you have it, because of my lifetime of association with “Puff the Magic Dragon” and by association with it, the band, “Peter, Paul and Mary, I'm guilty of being a child molesting, pot smoking, pot loving, commie sympathizing, Jesus music loving, pinko, anti-American traitor. There's just no two ways about it. When you're as guilty of the associations that I'm guilty of, there's just nothing else to say.
