TALK ABOUT TINY LITTLE MINDS...

Okay, even at this distant remove, I still shake my head.

This song got lots and lots of airplay.  It must have been somewhat depressing, for Randy Newman -- who'd written some really incredible stuff over the years, like Keep Your Hat On (the more familiar version of this is Joe Cocker's cover version, but I wouldn't give you a nickel for the qualitative difference) and Political Science (i.e., Let's Drop The Big One and See What Happens). 

Randy Newman's forte, before Short People, seems to have been sensitive, somewhat plaintive songs about what it's like to be Jewish in modern America, or about living in major metro areas where he felt like a number.   Oh, yeah -- clever, mildly hooky, humorous songs about sex, or heartfelt songs expressing his fear over global conflict.  Then he writes one dumb, ironic little throwaway number like Short People, and has one of the biggest hits he ever had, and becomes a cause celebre for an era.

And people just didn't/don't freakin' get it.  They whoop(ed) and holler(ed) about discrimination and bigotry.  How dare(d) Randy Newman write a song that's so discriminatory?   Short people -- what was he thinking?  Midgets boycott radio stations for playing the song.  Dwarves are interviewed on national TV spewing outrage.   People cry.  Kids taunt each other by singing it at each other on the playground.

Randy Newman is the biggest little guy you ever saw.  I give him five-three, tops.  

And yet, even after he went on Saturday Night Live and other shows, and performed the song live, his clearly ... short ... frame hunched over the keyboard ... people just didn't get it.

This was when I started to realize that, as an American citizen, I lived among MORONS. 

Sadly, the entire freaking country as a collective intellect has only gotten stupider since.

But hey -- you can keep your hat on.