Song of the Day: "Drunken Lullabies"

"Drunken Lullabies"

Flogging Molly

from Drunken Lullabies

2002

Happy Flogging-Banning Day, America. On this date 159 years ago, America banned flogging in the Army. It had been used as a brutal form of punishment for disobedient soldiers since the American Revolution, involving whipping your own men to keep them in line. A U.S. Senator read a description of flogging in a Herman Melville book, and was inspired to push through the law to ban the practice.

Soldiers weren't the only ones at the mercy of the whip, of course. For centuries, slaves were subject to flagellation as well. Wealthy slave owners would even hire poorer white men to whip the slaves if they didn't follow the "slave code."

This barely has anything to do with the Irish punk rock bro-band Flogging Molly, besides the name of the band. For today's Song of the Day, I saw that it was the anniversary of the banning of flogging in America, and worked backwards from there.

But typing my thoughts as they come to me has made me wonder whether there will ever come a time when there is a reckoning for Flogging Molly, when the name might come to be considered inappropriate. If I had to guess, I'd say probably not? It was awful that slaves were flogged, and I have no doubt that they were flogged in higher numbers than U.S. soldiers. But I don't know if the act of flogging is sufficiently tied to the idea of slavery for it to become inappropriate. I'm sure slaves were purposefully left to become dehydrated in higher numbers than other classes of citizens at the time, but I wouldn't think that a band called "Dehydration" should have anything to worry about.

You never know, though. I follow society. I had no idea that "Dixie Chicks" was inappropriate, but I was educated, and now understand that it was, and I back 100% the decision of that country music trio to change their name. If there comes a time when we consider a word like "flogging" to be inextricably tied to the horrors of American slavery, then I will back 100% any call for Flogging Molly to change their name.

Until then, "Drunken Lullabies" fucking RIPS. I know—this makes me Fake Irish, I'll listen to this song any day.

Just let me know when it's time to delete it from my iPod for ethical reasons, and I'll be right there.