{"id":2771,"date":"2013-03-03T04:07:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T04:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2771"},"modified":"2013-03-03T04:07:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T04:07:28","slug":"friday-evening-videos-authority-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/03\/friday-evening-videos-authority-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Evening Videos: &#8220;Authority Song&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know, I know. It&#8217;s <i>Sunday<\/i> night, not Friday. But I <i>intended <\/i>to post this on Friday, I just didn&#8217;t get around to it&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>So, anyhow, I had a couple of bad experiences at work last week, the kind of demoralizing, infuriating things that make you feel beaten down and not at all respected, and which leave you wondering what the hell is the point of continuing to bash your head against this brick anyhow? Believe me, I am not whining when I say that &#8220;proofreader&#8221; is probably the most thankless job in my entire industry. And yet come tomorrow morning I know I&#8217;m going to get up and ride that damn light-rail train into downtown and be at my desk ready to do it all over again. Because that&#8217;s just the way it is. And that reality makes me think that this little ditty must surely be my theme song, at least when it comes to matters of work:<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"725\" height=\"544\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wsEwK69LXjQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>John Mellencamp &#8212; or John Cougar Mellencamp, as he was known when he recorded this song for his 1983 album <em>Uh-Huh<\/em> &#8212; has never exactly been a favorite of mine. That is, if you asked me to name my favorite musicians, I probably wouldn&#8217;t think to add his name to the list. He&#8217;s always struck me as a little too dour, a little too self-important for my tastes. He comes across to me as something of a dick, to be frank. And yet, when I run down his discography, it turns out he&#8217;s recorded a tremendous amount of music that I&#8217;ve liked, and which has formed the background soundtrack for a big chunk of my life. Including, obviously, &#8220;The Authority Song,&#8221; his own take on the rebellious theme of the Bobby Fuller classic &#8220;I Fought the Law.&#8221; Like the latter, &#8220;Authority Song&#8221; is upbeat and infectious, while wryly observing that there&#8217;s not much the little guy can do to counter the power of The Man. And yet, like the song&#8217;s smart-ass narrator, you fight on anyhow, because the struggle is the thing that counts, not the victory.<\/p>\n<p>The tune reached number 15 on the <i>Billboard <\/i>charts. I think I read somewhere that Mellencamp refuses to play it at his live shows anymore because he&#8217;s too old to relate to the song&#8217;s youthful sentiment. Whatever. Mellencamp may be old and settled, but &#8220;I fight authority, authority always wins&#8221; sounds like the story of my life, even as I push on into middle age&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know, I know. It&#8217;s Sunday night, not Friday. But I intended to post this on Friday, I just didn&#8217;t get around to it&#8230;. So, anyhow, I had a couple of bad experiences at work last week, the kind of demoralizing, infuriating things that make you feel beaten down and not at all respected, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friday-evening-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}