These are wonderful-- and I wonder if our childhoods-- when we all learned to freely express some hostility -- many of these songs are familiar to me, did something to protect us from acting them out.
My children and and nieces and nephews have heard most of these songs (they have been forced to ride in the car with me) but they don't know them.. songs like these are lost-- and instead-- we have children acting out the actions.
Today's NYtimes has an article about children and violence-- an the idea that children can't even make idle threats-- since there is a policy of "zero tolerance" and each threat is taken seriously-- maybe we need to make sure kids have outlets--safe outlets for urges.. Destruction is a creative impulse.. maybe we need to have creative impulses to make wicked songs.. and not have wicked acts!
most adults are not subject to zero tolerance-- and like Ralph Cramdon, many times, men (women) who have never acted violently-- say "one of these day, pow! right in the kisser" and don't 1) really mean it, 2) don't get prosecute for threatening violence.
