-By Warner Todd Huston
NPR is again flogging a recent anti-fracking protest song performed by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon that features the memorable refrain, “pleeeease, don’t frack my mother.”
The half-comedic song debuted during the Summer on the late night TV talk show Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and was performed by Ono, the former paramour of the Beatle’s John Lennon, Sean, John’s son from his union with Yoko, and host Fallon.
On a side note, are we to understand that congenial Jimmy Fallon is taking a stand against the economic growth that has come to millions of Americans as a result of fracking? Is that a good idea, Mr. Fallon?
NPR dredged up the mostly adolescent song in a January 27 report on the protests against fracking.
In its report, NPR says that the term fracking originally only pertained to hydraulic fracturing but has now become an absurd catchall phrase to cover “just about anything to do with producing oil and gas.”
Why is the term in such wide use? Because “It sort of has this naughty connotation to it.”
The tune approximated John Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are A Changin'”, and featured Sean affecting a gravely voice as Yoko danced around yelling out “don’t frack me, don’t frack me” while carrying a globe helpfully labeled “Mother Earth.”
The song, though, seemed to aim more at dropping double entendres than in successfully driving home any message about hydraulic fracturing.
Sean had previously spoken out against hydraulic fracturing–or fracking–in an editorial published in The New York Times in August of 2012.
Many of the claims offered by anti-fracking protesters were debunked in the recent documentary movie FrackNation which debuted earlier this month. The film, directed by Irish journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, devastates the many distortions that anti-fracking activists perpetrate in another recent documentary titled Gasland.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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