Last week I posted the ridiculous version of ‘Ole’ Man River’ as performed by Frank Sinatra in the Jerome Kern biopic ‘Til The Cloud Roll By’, wearing a white suit on a white set in a all-white world. Another version of a ‘whiten-ing up’ of the song comes in a much less offensive and this time intentionally funny skit by Stan Freberg called ‘Elderly Man River’. The skit is weirdly relevant to our current day confusion as to what constitutes ‘correct’ thought vs. ‘offensive’ thought. Indeed, Freberg seems to be onto micro-aggressions before the invention of the term. While the concept of the skit–a censor insisting on word changes to the lyrics of the song so as to avoid offending listeners–is amusing, it plays itself out fairly quickly. The skit becomes truly relevant (and funnier) half way through as Freberg, having gotten the idea of what the censor expects, begins to self-correct himself. I don’t know about you, but the struggle I have with wokeness has more to do with my own self-consciousness about having inadvertently made an error that offends somebody than it has to do with other issues associated with the term and ideology. The song was only twenty years old when Freberg’s little sketch on it potentially being regarded as an inadvertent slur appeared. It makes me wonder if a revival of ‘Showboat’ is, in fact, a possibility in our current era, or if Kern and Hammerstein’s remarkable score would be accused of cultural appropriation…