January 6, 2010

Ray Stevens: We The People update

In a more normal blog entry than the previous one I wanted to update those who don't keep up to date with statistics that "We The People" earlier today ranked #50 among comedy MP3's at the on-line music store, Amazon. Among all MP3 singles in all formats it ranked #881. The single has placed on the various Amazon MP3 best-seller charts for several days. A lot of the time, as most readers of this blog have come to find out, novelty songs don't necessarily garner mainstream support or much respect...even songs that have become million sellers in the novelty and comedy field are marginalized. This marginalization in hindsight causes a song or a singer to be labeled as a cult favorite or a cult hit. The term implies that a song or a singer achieves their popularity through secondary methods by mostly working outside the mainstream and developing what critics wrongfully label as a cult following. Almost any act that is labeled to have a cult following generally doesn't appear on what some call the "national radar" even though the singer may in fact have remained popular with specific audiences for years and years. Such following is, you guessed it, called a cult following.

However, I will caution those reading this that the so-called "cult following" or "cult popularity" that many mainstream critics label Ray Stevens and his fan-base isn't exactly the same as the cult followings of Star Trek or Star Wars movies and television programs. I have yet to see a collection of Ray Stevens fans at concerts or at any meet and greet function dressed as Shriner's or wearing trench coats getting ready to streak...nor have I seen fans dressed as Arab's. So, in that scenario, Ray's fans are far from being part of some cult following.

As far as "We The People", the latest spin from several on-line media outlets that have mentioned the song is the predictable marginalization approach. The mainstream media marginalized the Tea Party movement and the liberal talking-heads on talk shows summarized it as nothing more than a small segment of the population "behaving like angry mobs". For those who may not know, marginalization is pretty self-explanatory. It's when someone's views or someone's influence is shoved aside and deemed unimportant or ineffective although often is the case marginalization seeks to silence an otherwise factual argument because the opposition has nothing to counter with. The practice of ignoring or pushing concerns or opinions off to the side is marginalization.

Everyone knows what a margin on a sheet of notebook paper is. It's the side of the page which may contain notations or doodling but often doesn't get the eye-catching attention as the items on the "full page" do. So, in social jargon, when someone or something is being marginalized it means it's being shoved to the side and pronounced unimportant. The recent announcements by several Democrats of not running for re-election this year is being marginalized as of right now because the media spin-doctors and those in charge of damage control have gone out of their way to make it appear as if the decisions are based on other factors instead of ObamaCare. If this were the case and they're not wanting to run for re-election based on fall-out from ObamaCare, why make the decision in January 2010? All the evidence points to the ObamaCare controversy being the impetus for the decisions. The two Senators in question are Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Governor Bill Ritter of Colorado has also announced he isn't running for re-election.

There was a double-edged sword comment pointed at Ray Stevens that I came across on a blog earlier this morning. The blogger wondered why Ray, in the song, is satisfied with saying the health care bill is a Republican vs Democrat issue. That blog, I should point out, targeted Independents who don't have much support for either major political party. So in that sense it was like 'consider the source' because an Independent would prefer to look for people outside the political spectrum to "fix things in Washington" as the saying goes.

The You Tube play count for the "We The People" music video, as of now, is 1,445,149 and in a few days the video will mark it's 1 month anniversary at the web-site. Does anyone else think that the music video could eventually top 2 million plays? If a little more than half a million people view the video it's possible. I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Show your appreciation for the music of Ray Stevens...leave a comment...