You Gotta Fight… For Your Right…

This article from the August 2012 edition of the IPA Review is by Researcher at the IPA, Peter Gregory.

The United States of America. The Land of the Free. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Washington. Jefferson. Lincoln.

This is the nation that gave us Sinatra, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Willie Nelson, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, NWA and…um…Britney Spears. But the cultural heart of the United States of America is under attack from an army of wowsers, party-poopers and fusspots. An army that is intent on destroying what I like to call the 28th Amendment-the right to get yo’ freak on!

It is no coincidence that in the same month that Adam Yauch (aka MCA) of the Beastie Boysthe band who wrote the party anthem, You Gotta Fight for your Right to Party-died that 6-year-old D’Avonte Meadows was suspended from his school in Colorado. (To be honest, it was actually a complete coincidence.)

Young D’Avonte was not suspended for fighting. Or for stealing or bullying or truancy. He was suspended for singing one line from pop duo LMFAO’s smash hit I’m sexy and I know it.

But it wasn’t just the fact that he was singing the words, ‘I’m sexy and I know it’, that got him banned. No. He’d sung it before and had only been sent to the principal’s office. The act that pushed school authorities over the edge-and saw him sent home for 3 days-was that at the same time as singing, ‘I’m sexy and I know it’, D’Avonte was…

…’shaking his booty’.

That’s a direct quote from his mum.

I’d love to be able to tell you this was a blip. An oversight. An aberration of America’s illustrious history of getting its groove on.

But I’d be lying.

In April, the town of Weston, Florida banned nightclubs, dance halls and skating rinks. Permanently. This was done to, ‘protect the quality of life’, of residents. What? Quality of life? A life without boogey is no life at all.

Incidents such as these are an assault on fun not seen since the dark days of Prohibition.

Whether it’s having the right to sing a song containing the word ‘wiggle’ in it 21 times, or being able to shake it on a humble d-floor in your home town, it’s time to stand up for getting down.

You gotta fight…for your right…

You know the rest.