Folk Songs and Weird Boys in Bathrooms: Against Mockery

On X (Twitter) today, a number of conservatives I know shared this TikTok video. It’s a production of a duo called the “Childless Cat Ladies” accompanied by the DC Labor Chorus. Together, they number some twenty men and women, and though nearly all appear Medicare eligible, they can carry a fine tune and hit some solid harmonies. The song is called “We’re Not Going Back,” and it is sung to the tune of the old spiritual-turned-labor anthem, “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

@cathybanjoCHILDESS CAT LADIES join chorus for WE'RE NOT GOING BACK. Let's keep up the momentum for #kamalaharris #catsoftiktok #CATLADIES #songwriter #singalong #vote #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp @broskireport #Folksong #songster #election #folksinger #chorus #community #election

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I listened to it, and I started to cry, because I belong to a generation raised on folk songs sung by people who looked and sounded very much like the Childless Cat Ladies and the DC Labor Chorus. I can imagine my mother and her friends on that porch! I have heard this song since infancy. I grew up on Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Odetta, early Joan Baez, and the broad American canon. I absolutely lost it on the last verse that the DC Chorus sing in this version:

Passing the torch now, we’re not going back,

Lead us to tomorrow, we’re not going back

Just like a tree that’s standing by the water, we are not going back.

My conservative friends lost it too, but with scorn rather than sentiment. They mocked the video savagely. Aging white liberals, shod in Birkenstocks and draped in tie-dye, filled with moral certainty? Do they not see what caricatures they are? I won’t repeat the grosser taunts and teases, but you can probably imagine what was said. If you didn’t grow up in a folk music family, the ridicule may rise more easily for you. Of course, that’s always true. If it isn’t what you love that’s being scoffed at, it’s easy to laugh along. Look at these idiots.

Honi soit qui mal y pense — I quote Edward III a lot. A loose translation is “The shame belongs to the one who thinks ill of it,” and it is a warning against the temptation to mock and jibe and deride. It is the motto of the Order of the Garter, and as the legend goes, His Majesty was dancing at court one day in 1348, when a young noblewoman’s garter fell out of her dress and on to the floor. King Edward reached down, and presumably to save the young woman embarrassment, put the garter on his own leg until it rested just above the knee. Some people snorted, and the King, with a steady glare, offered that famous reply. The Order of the Garter is the most senior order in the entire British honors system — and it all began with a monarch making a very sharp point about the sin of mockery.

On this same day that right-wing Twitter guffawed at what they regard as the risible earnestness of the Childless Cat Ladies, left-wing Twitter could not stop sharing a photo first published by the Daily Mail. The breathless caption reads Trump VP pick JD Vance is seen posing with three female classmates at boys' urinals in unearthed high school photo.

Several left-wing groups posted the image, most captioning it with what has become the standard sobriquet directed at the GOP Vice-Presidential nominee: weird.

J.D. does not look like a strikingly handsome and athletic young man. He appears awkward, overweight, unsure where to direct his gaze. From his own memoir, we know he was going through a hard time in high school, even though we don’t know how he ended up participating in this silly photo op. It is safe to say, based on multiple accounts and photo evidence, that he was not a popular boy.

We also recognize, instantly, that this photo represents the sort of thing that goes on in high schools. Teenagers do dumb stuff, stuff they find hilariously funny at the time, and if they are lucky —- as they were until recently — no one snaps a photo of their hijinks. Most of the time, no one gets hurt and everyone goes home with a funny story, ideal for reviving at the fortieth high school reunion. Reviving around friends who will laugh with you, that is, and not at you.

Do those old people on that porch not realize how cringeworthy they are, soaked in their harmonic self-righteousness? Does J.D. Vance not understand that most sensible people see him as a leering, predatory oddball? How can anyone in their right mind be inspired by that awful treacle? How can anyone want this lumpish oaf anywhere near the White House? And on it goes.

If you tell people not to mock, they will accuse you of not having a sense of humor. They will also remind you that some people are, of course, very bad people, and it is necessary to mock them in order to establish some basic ground rules for society. Besides, it’s cathartic to laugh at the other side. Ridicule allows one to demonstrate one’s cleverness in a way that overt hatred does not.

I continue to delay on writing my manual of updated rules for gentlemen and ladies, but I will tell you that in the hierarchy of moral transgressions, schadenfreude and mockery are graver sins than you imagine. Mockery does not represent, contra popular opinion, an attempt to establish a healthy norm. Rather it represents a failure of empathy, a failure of curiosity, and the total absence of humility. It dresses up genuine malice as “all in good fun” or “just taking the piss,” as the Brits would have it. It hides sadism behind sarcasm, cruelty behind cleverness. It is a tempting vice, especially when you can convince yourself that the objects of your mean and petty jibes have richly earned your scorn.

If you worry that the world will be humorless without the mockery of those unlike you, I commend to you the art of witty self-deprecation. (Forget punching up or punching down, find a way to slap yourself. That’s the polite way to engender laughter.)

God bless the Childless Cat Ladies, and God bless the boys and girls who struggle in high school, and God give us the strength to bite back the ever-so-clever poison that longs to drip from our tongues.