Young Americans - David Bowie / Lyrics

They pulled in just behind the fridge
He lays her down, he frowns
Gee my life's a funny thing, am I still too young?
He kissed her then and there
She took his ring, took his babies
It took him minutes, took her nowhere
Heaven knows, shed have taken anything, but

All night
She wants the young American
Young American, young American, she wants the young American
All right
She wants the young American

Scanning life through the picture windows
She finds the slinky vagabond
He coughs as he passes her Ford mustang, but
Heaven forbid, she'll take anything
But the freak, and his type, all for nothing
He misses a step and cuts his hand, but
Showing nothing, he swoops like a song
She cries where have all papa's heroes gone?

All night
She wants the young American
Young American, young American, she wants the young American
All right
She wants the young American

All the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?

All night
He wants the young American
Young American, young American, he wants the young American
All right
He wants the young American

Do you remember, your president Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay
Or even yesterday

Have you been an un-American?
Just you and your idol singing falsetto bout
Leather, leather everywhere, and
Not a myth left from the ghetto
Well, well, well, would you carry a razor
In case, just in case of depression
Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors
Blushing at all the afro-sheilas
Aint that close to love?
Well, aint that poster love?
Well, it aint that barbie doll
Her heart's been broken just like you have

And
All night
You want the young American
Young American, young American, you want the young American
All right
You want the young American

You aint a pimp and you ain't a hustler
A pimps got a Cadi and a lady got a Chrysler
Blacks got respect, and whites got his soul train
Mamas got cramps, and look at your hands ache
I heard the news today, oh boy
I got a suite and you got defeat
Ain't there a man you can say no more?
And, ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw?
And, aint there a child I can hold without judging?
Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me
Break down and cry?

All night
I want the young American
Young American, young American, I want the young American
All right
I want the young American
Young American
Young American, young American, I want the young American
(I want with you, I want with you want)
All right
(you want it, I want you you, you want I, I want you want)
Young American, young American, I want the young American (I want to want, to want, to want , to want I, I want you)
All right
(Lord I wanted the young American)
(young American)
Young American, young American
I want the young American
Mmmmmm mmm

"Holy shit, Sheila! What are you doing?!!"

LOL

From Harpers Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’

3. In America today, the debate seems to focus on the efficacy of torture—whether it is a useful tool for getting at the truth. You note the flow from the Roman Ulpian, who accepts torture as something quite normal to be used in interrogation (though he does at some points express skepticism about its usefulness) to Cesare Beccaria, whose monumental denunciation of torture did so much to influence European ideas about torture and criminal justice in the eighteenth century. But today we seem stuck in a debate in which those who use torture are eager to try to justify themselves but unwilling to let a bright light shine into their conduct, ostensibly for national security reasons, though many will inevitably suspect that secrecy is driven by concerns for their own culpability. You offer up a very lengthy and nuanced discussion on the efficacy of torture, and in your Washington Post column on five myths you have pulled some chestnuts out of it. One of them is that “people will say anything under torture.” But isn’t the claim rather the way Shakespeare put it in act III of the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ that people will say what they think the torturer wants them to say? And doesn’t that explain why societies that put a premium on confessions like torture to extract them, and why al-Libi told the CIA about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD plans? Don’t you think that the efficacy discussion has to address the broader consequences that a decision to use torture has to reputation, and conversely to the ability of a terrorist foe to recruit?

Yes, I do. During the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Shah’s torture was the best recruiting tool the opposition had. Prisons were places where prisoners met each other and professionalized their skills, as I and others have documented. It feels like a nightmare watching American politicians make the same mistake as the Shah. I like to believe that with every mistake we must surely be learning, but sometimes it is hard to believe.

When I talked about people under torture saying anything, I was especially interested in the cases where torturers interrogate for true information. That’s what I document doesn’t work. But it seems pretty clear that torture works to generate false confessions, which serve equally as well as true confessions for many state purposes. When judges and juries value confessions as decisive proof, police are happy to generate confessions for convictions. This can happen in domestic crime, as it happened in Chicago in the 1980s where African Americans were sentenced to death on the basis of coerced confessions. They’re also good for international show trials, trials that exonerate the state’s failures. Stalin wanted show trials to demonstrate that terrorists and saboteurs caused his failures, and he wasn’t the last leader who liked show trials to vindicate his decisions. And lastly, states use false confessions as blackmail to turn prisoners into unwilling informants. Torture allows one to collect dependent and insular individuals, spreading a net of fear across a population. This can happen locally (as in a ghetto) or in a whole state, like East Germany.

It’s also true that torturers often hear what they want to hear. In fact that’s one of the big problems with torture that I document in the book and the “Five Myths” article. Even if torture could actually break a person and they told you the truth, the torturer has to recognize it was the truth, and too often that doesn’t happen because torturers come into a situation with their own assumptions and don’t believe the victim. Moreover, intelligence gathering is especially vulnerable to deception. In police work, the crime is already known; all one wants is the confession. In intelligence, one must gather information about things that one does not know.

And let’s remember, torturers aren’t chosen for intelligence; they are chosen for devotion and loyalty, and they are terrible at spotting the truth when they see it. In the “Five Myths” piece I talk about how the Chilean secret service lost valuable information in that way when they broke Sheila Cassidy, an English doctor, and she told them everything but they didn’t believe her. And one can just repeat dozens of stories like this. My favorite is when Senator John McCain tried to explain the concept of Easter to his North Vietnamese torturer. “We believe there was a guy who walked the earth, did great things, was killed and three days later, he rose from the dead and went up to heaven.” His interrogator was puzzled and asked him to explain it again and again. He left, and when he came back, he was angry and threatened to beat him. Americans couldn’t possibly believe in “Easter” since no one lives again; McCain had to be making this up."

I'm pretty certain that Brits don't say, fair dinkum, sheila, bogan or wakka. Maybe they say, sickie and definitely wanker and tosser.

gorgonheap, took the geek channel a while back, or created it, or something, I have never been there until today-fact of the matter is, I haven't been to my channel since I was coerced by another sifter, who chimed in here, but was too comfy in the fraidy-hole (and lifting the finger off the one on the bong), to come out and play-
I never understood, how geeks learned to relish in their enigmatic square-ness, instead of learning some practical skills-Like how to use a zipper, which fork to scratch with, etc., and none so more adept daily, than this one with the furries/PBS fettish.
This kid loves to make up for all the wedgies in gym class, when there is someone self-linking here, he ripps virtual asshole, like its going out of style, or at least not available to him, while behind closed bed-room door (mom's house), with his pals on Second Life. Oh wait. Sorry. Your a man. TeamFortress2, future sociopaths of America training camp.

Did I miss anybody??? Ahhhh...the mistress of ceremony, opera-glass Sheila, the resident queen of dead blogs, second only to ladybug, in her care for things birthed, and left to fend.(damn...can't find it now, it has a lovely picture of her in her raincoat, and her ass is not as fat as she wants y'all t'believe either......she is, in fact, the stick-figure opposite, which is perhaps why high winds, and disasters that come with getting blown away, excite her. I dunno, a weather blog, is excitement squared, and all the interesting folks DO seem to always be talking about the weather.
Rock and Roll will never die, but it will always insure, that she is in the #1 spot on the Videosift, like the only pimp at a hooker's convention, her job is waaaayyyyy to easy!

This was a real shebang folks, hope y'all all learned something from this experiment......karaidl, you have my vote for the saves, although we really should have developed more a symbiotic, double-team....I am simply not in your league, young goodman braun.

On the plus side, the kooks briefly kept clueless harridan Sheila Jackson-Lee's trap shut.

Prior to the 110th Congress, Lee served on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees space policy and NASA. She once asked, during a visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whether the Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted on Mars in 1969 by Neil Armstrong.

uh.. did it say sheila's father wanted her too? I think people were smoking a little to much hash in the 60's.

"... In lieu of cold statistics, we offer you Sheila..."

chic produced and played the instruments on this. it's perfect. the longer version (from the 12") has a massive, gorgeous piano breakdown in the middle section.

more on sheila...

i like the children's theater part, and Karen O's frenetic energy is well displayed, but the rest could have been more cleverly executed (high standards for Spike's videos). i was tempted to post this back in the day, but i think i decided to instead post Cunningham's awesome video for 'Sheila is a Parasite' (which stalled in the queue, boohoo).

"I'll take stock footage n' beats combo, hold the Sheila!