Wops, Cops, and Roger Waters

Woggie is back, and he has a new ethic slur of the moment. After three albums with iffy references to Asian people (The Final Cut, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, and Amused to Death), and some crude (but funny) jabs at the Irish on The Wall's DVD commentary, he's gone and rhymed "wops" with "cops" on his upcoming song "Leaving Beirut."

Roger, dear Roger, why can't you leave the crappy end-rhyming to Gilmour?

Really, now. He does claim that the whole "fleeced in Naples by the wops" business is drawn from personal experience, as opposed to a generalized perception of Italians as pickpocket criminals, but personal experience is no excuse for a lyrical gaffe Gilmour wouldn't have permitted on About Face.

Besides, the sort of slurs Roger throws about in a careless manner give his attempts at addressing contemporary issues an almost quaint feel. Wops? Hey Rog, I have an idea for your next song: "Dagotown." Has a nice mouthfeel, doesn't it? We can base it on my great-grandfather's personal experience in old San Jose. Come down here and I'll share my notes with you.

Or, how about an album based on the injustice of NINA policies? Oh, wait, you're not so keen on the Irish.

I'm being unfair. I will be the first to say that many of the "slurs" that get Roger in trouble for being misogynist, anti-Semitic, anti-black, etc, are explicable and even appropriate within the context of his albums. All the neo-Nazi ranting on The Wall is in a narrative framework that demands it-- come on, how scary is a would-be messianic dictator character going to be if he gets up at the podium at his latter-day Nuremburg and just picks on the dopeheads and acne-ridden music freaks? He'd probably get drafted for public office by political parties on both sides of the Atlantic. No, Pink needs to be an evil bastard, or at least talk like one, and taking the lyrics out of context and beating Roger with them is missing the point. Even the "gook" line from Amused to Death's "Too Much Rope" makes sense, as it's given to the viewpoint of a former Vietnam vet who is trying to make peace with his past. Context is critical.

The man does seem to have a problem with Asians, though. At the very least, he comes across as insensitive toward them; as I wrote above, the iffy references to Asians are on at least three albums covering a nine-year period. Roger may have even slipped some "nip" or "jap" references into Radio KAOS that have escaped me. It troubles me far more than the common accusations, because not all the references can be neatly explained away by narrative demand, but I haven't seen any widespread commentary on this particular issue. (And the alt.music.roger-waters crowd didn't much care when I brought it up about four years back.)
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That Icelandic interview I linked to above is interesting for another reason: I can't seem to recall hearing or reading about the teenaged Roger's jaunt through the Middle East before. At the least, this account of joyriding and hitchhiking through Beirut and Baghdad rings only the faintest of bells, though it should be at least as interesting to the Floydian biographer as Gilmour and Barrett busking in France. If the young Roger really did view regions outside Britain and the usual British holiday destinations (St. Tropez, etc) firsthand, that does somewhat dull the "armchair commentator" blade that's also used against him. At least he bothered to leave the chair!

Come to think of it, a new bio on the Floyd did come out last year; I didn't have a chance to buy it then and I don't remember the author's name now. Maybe that had details on Roger-in-Beirut. I'll have to look into it.

A final thought: Roger's car broke down on the road to Damascus. There's a weighty image to ponder.