Smart Kids, Joe

I'm fourteen years old and I'm in eighth grade. The little fourth graders have just completely the D.A.R.E. program, just like I had four years previous. Officer Gallagher is still the Cheltenham police officer who is coming to Presentation B.V.M. to teach about the dangers of drugs. He's there at today's "graduation ceremony." As is customary, the sitting Student Council President has to dress up like McGruff the Crime Dog. I am tall for my age but I'm still small enough to get the costume on. I stand at the front of the Church Hall as all the tiny sober fourth graders come up one by one to give me a hug or a high five, and I stand there, silent except for the tiny fan in the back of McGruff's head to keep me cool. I don't remember what I was thinking at the time.

I swear to god that I had completely blocked out this insignificant anecdote, and it didn't come back to me until after I had chosen Smart Kids for our esteemed Record Club. But I included it at the top of this review to show you that, even as someone who literally embodied McGruff as part of a D.A.R.E. ceremony, and I can say with unwavering certainty and great emphasis: FUCK McGruff the Crime Dog.

I'm nineteen years old and I'm a freshman in college. I'm shit drunk on Jägermeister and Monster energy drink cocktails, and I'm sitting in a dorm room at 10 PM. One of the guys on the floor has fashioned a makeshift vape out of plastic bag and a hair dryer, and the bag of smoke is being passed around. This is the closest I will ever come to deciding to do drugs. There is literally no reason for me to decline, and yet I still do. I am against doing drugs. It is official after this night.

The difference between me and McGruff, though, is that only one of us is intent on perpetuating the stigma of using drugs. No, technically McGruff isn't incorrect in saying that children shouldn't do drugs (and that adults probably shouldn't either), but it's the implication that those who choose to do drugs are stupid. It's the opening line of "users are losers," with the implication being that these losers don't deserve help. If you do drugs, says McGruff, then you are less than. You are a loser. He doesn't say it, but there is no doubt that McGruff wishes you were dead if you dare to use drugs. McGruff inspired an entire generation of suburban boomers to say shit like "well using heroin was a choice." Where's the empathy? FUCK McGruff.

I am doing an absolutely terrible job of explaining this, because I am a stupid fucking moron. I also might be stumbling over my words a little bit because, well, I apparently have strong words about a cartoon dog. It's tough to make salient points when the circumstances are this preposterous. A cartoon K9 cop is ripping through the classic sounds of the 1980s on cassette to convince you not to sniff inhalants... how do you even say all that with a straight face? It's silly. But that's why it's dangerous!

I'm 33 years old and I'm standing in my kitchen, with a goddamn McGruff anti-drug album playing over the iPod speakers, and Willow is asking me to again see the cover of the album on the iPod's screen. She's laughing, because it's a cartoon dog. The song "No, No, No!" is playing, and Willow is apparently at the age now where she's asking the question "What is this song about?" when she hears a song. Which is fucking awesome in general, but not in this context, because now I'm tasked with explaining everything I am thinking (and have so far written in this review) to a three-year-old, and I make the disastrous decision to explain it to her as such: "McGruff is a bad dog."

You can tell that confuses and devastates her, because she knows what it means to be a "bad dog." She's seen the live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp; she knows that "bad dog" can be its own type of stigma. But I don't really know what else to say. There is literally no way to adequately explain to a three-year-old that the War on Drugs was designed to target and decimate communities of color. All she knows is that there is a funny dog on my iPod right now singing goofy songs, and the term "bad dog" confuses the hell out of her. I am a failure of a parent. It's not like she gives a fuck anyway. Four seconds later and she's talking about B***pi, her mind in a million directions at once. Maybe we can talk about it again when she starts taking D.A.R.E. classes at her future Catholic school.

I'm 33 years old and I'm standing in the same kitchen and I'm explaining to my wife that Record Club is going to listen to an Ad Council promotional anti-drug album from 1986 featuring McGruff the Crime Dog, and I'm talking about how I feel like I need to donate to a charity to offset the evils of McGruff that I'm bringing back into the world by choosing this album, and she's asking what's so "evil" about McGruff the Crime Dog, and I make the disastrous decision to explain it to her as such: "McGruff is a cop."

I'm 24 years old, and I'm graduating first in my class for Philadelphia Police Dispatchers, and the Police Inspector in charge of the radio department is asking me whether I am going to apply to become a police officer. I tell him no, but only because I don't want to shave my beard. The thought literally never crosses my mind that maybe it's not even ethical to join the police department.

But now I'm 27 years old and I'm sitting at my work desk (having left the police radio department already) and I'm watching a video feed of Philando Castile's senseless murder by a police officer, and I'm realizing that there is literally no justification for Castile to be killed, and I'm also realizing that half the country doesn't give a fuck or is purposefully avoiding this truth, their eyes hidden behind a thin blue bandana wrapped so tightly that it's cutting off circulation. And now I'm 28 years old, and I'm 29 years old, and I'm 30 years old, and every single month it seems like there is another black person murdered by a police officer for no fucking reason. And I'm 31 years old, and I'm watching Philadelphia citizens who believes so strongly that black people should not be murdered senselessly that they are marching on the highway, and I'm watching as those same citizens are gassed and tortured by those same police officers who are killing black people at 3.23 times the rate as white people.

I'm 33 years old right now and I'm telling you that McGruff is a part of that lineage. There is a reason that the McGruff slogan employs the violent imagery of "biting." This isn't figurative. McGruff, like every other cop on earth, is telling you that criminals are not worthy of life. "Users are losers," and so McGruff is a cop who is saying that those users can also fuck off and die.

I say all this to explain that the exploration of McGruff as a musical artist is a worthy endeavor, because there are multiple sources of tension at work here. There is the tension between text and metatext—I think that the album is really silly and kinda fun from a musical standpoint, and yet I am so jaded and so self-hating that I can't help but despise this bullshit. There is the tension between text and subtext—this is a cartoon dog singing in a preposterously toneless rasp, and yet this is also a cartoon dog who is putting a stamp of approval on mass incarceration and who is in total support of a ruling class who are hellbent on annihilating our way of life and our right to life.

And there is tension between text and context—we go from A) the fact that this is a cartoon dog to B) the fact that he is singing explicitly about crack and cocaine burns your brain, which is kind of dark, to C) the fact that the music is, for the most part, bubbly '80s-synth pop music sugar. I mean, holy FUCK this is CATCHY, which is insane to think about for more than a few minutes at a time. Every song on this album has been stuck in my head at one point or another this week. From the backup singers on "No, No, No!" crashing into the chorus with their energetic cries of "OH! OH! OH!" to the Too Many Cooks-esque sitcom opener "I'll Decide on My Own" to the Steely Dan-biting smooth jazz of "Alcohol" to the would-be training-montage-tracking of "Marijuana" to the classic group-charity-song stylings of the title track ("It's true! Truly it's true!"), there isn't a miss on this fucker.

But the tension is still thickly pervasive throughout each and every listen. It's impossible not to feel that tension.

I'm sixteen years old, and I'm in the woods at Burholme, and I'm with a few friends at the firepit. There's a bottle of vodka that we had Andy buy for us, and I'm there, taking swigs from the bottle just like everyone else. This was a the first time I ever got tipsy off of alcohol. First of many, I should clarify, though if you care enough to read a blog post written by Joe K***, then you already know this. I've been drinking regularly for over half my life now, and it's probably safe to say that I have problems.

I know this. I've been honest about it. And in a perverse sort of way, my alcohol addiction has served as a kind of backward motivation when it comes to refraining from other substances. My reasoning has always been: "I know because of alcohol that I have an addictive personality, and I'm already experiencing so many problems because of that addiction to alcohol, so why should I add drugs to the mix? I know without a doubt that it won't end well."

It's interesting that McGruff includes a song about alcohol on this album too, though, isn't it? Look, again, he's not wrong, per se. I am a dope. But what's wrong about this song, along with all the rest of the songs, is that it misses this nuance of self-awareness. I know I'm a dope because I drink too much alcohol, but it's so fucking hard to not be a dope. Maybe not even hard; maybe it's impossible. But McGruff is just so fucking dismissive of the whole thing. It doesn't matter that I have issues with alcohol, that I try to be better and continuously fail and then continue the cycle by drinking more alcohol to try to make myself less sad about all the drinking I do—none of this is of any concern to McGruff and his kind. I'm just a dope, end of story. Fuck McGruff the Crime Dog.

In that, this tension can serve as a warning for those tempted to indulge in the genuinely impressive array of 1980s synth pop. In just the same way that I continue to drink alcohol despite the harm that it causes me and my family, and in the same way others might use heroin despite the unavoidable destruction it can bring to one's life, there is similarly a danger in mindlessly consuming this shiny product from a different era. Yes, it's fun and funny and funky and seemingly innocent, but after a while you start to understand that this is cloaking some dark propaganda created by a faction of the power elite who will stop at nothing to maintain that power, up to and including criminalizing and imprisoning and murdering members of the proletariat.

And they are getting away with it! Because the fact of this insidious bullshit is a cartoon dog with a lovably scruffy singing voice! Don't give in! Stay strong! Fight the power! Fuck McGruff the Crime Dog!

GRADE: 0.5 pukes out of 5

P.S. I'm 33 years old and I'm calling 1-800-COCAINE as instructed by Smart Kids in the song "Cocaine & Crack." The number is disconnected. Maybe McGruff is dead.