"Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses
Let's club 'em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard"
From his 1989 album New York. The icy stare of the amoral observer can, sometimes, give rise to a compassionate voice then tip over into social commentary - and even politics tinged with outrage. Here the outrage is vividly explicit.
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"Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on them. That's what the Statue of Bigotry says." Putting my Halloween costume together reminded me that Lou Reed (my costume last year) died just over a year ago. Unfortunately, the lyrics to many of the songs on New York, like this one, are just as, if not more scathingly true now then they were 25 yrs ago. RIP Lou.