The D.J. and W

Faggoty-Ass Faggot (whose blog I’ve just discovered and who is just all kinds of delectable bitchiness and irreverence) offers some thoughts on radio Delilah. In case you don’t know who Delilah is:

The premise of her show is this: people from across the country call in to tell Delilah their love story of woe or inspiration. Sometimes a wife calls to express her devotion to her husband of thirty years. Or a new mother calls to crow about the joy her child is bringing her. Or perhaps a man tells about his stormy relationship with his girlfriend. The unifying thread is love. And then there's the gimmick.

What's the gimmick? Each caller gets a special song picked out by Delilah herself.

But not just any song, you see. No, Delilah picks out a love ditty that is completely inappropriate or un-fucking-related to any part of the caller's story. For
example:

Caller: Delilah, this has been a very difficult two years for me. I finally left my abusive husband after eleven years. For eighteen months he stalked and harassed me, and after a restraining order and a trial, he's finally put away and I can move on with my life and perhaps find new love. Can you play something just for me?

Delilah: Of course we can. Here's The Police with Every Breath You Take.

Or perhaps:

Caller: Delilah, my brother is my best friend. He's in the army, and next week he's deploying to Iraq for a year. It's going to be so hard not to have him around to talk to every day. Can you play something to show him how much I'm going to miss him?

Delilah: Just for you, caller, here's Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton with Islands in the Stream.

Caller: Oh thank you, Delilah. That's just perfect.

One time I called to express my concerns about the creeping fascism in America and my fear that our democracy is being slowly but steadily undermined in ways that the average American dismisses as conspiracy theory, and she played Deutschland Deutschland Über Alles. She’s really not good.*

Faggoty-Ass Faggot wisely observes that the draw of the indescribably saccharine Delilah has similar roots to the appeal of, well, someone else who probably doesn’t deserve it:

As I listen to Delilah, it strikes me that her success has come at an interesting period in our country. The consensus among many Americans is that life is scary right now, the choices are too difficult, and everything seems too complex for the average person to handle. There's a place, it would seem, for someone who pretends to listen to your troubles, offers a few simple platitudes, and slaps a Band-Aid on your troubles that covers the problem but in the long run solves nothing. Like Delilah.

Or Dubya, perhaps? It's a similar mechanism, I hypothesize, that drives people to
listen to shallow radio hosts for comfort, slap magnetic yellow ribbons on the bumpers of their cars, and hand a retard a 60% approval rating.

I just wish the forty-third president of these United States would spin Everlasting Love for the masses rather than try to take away my Social Security.

You said it, FAF.


---------------------------------------
* That is, of course, a total lie.