The True Protest ...

We really could use another Phil Ochs today

Poor doomed Phil Ochs, that folksinger with the choir boy voice, was by far the most brilliant topical song writer of the 1960s; if you do not know his music, you really should. He often had a darkly pessimistic outlook, especially after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated; but he also wrote some of the savagely funny lyrics I’ve ever heard. Haunted by his demons, he hung himself in his sister’s bathroom in April 1976, when he was just 35 years old.

I think of him often, especially when I contemplate the latest atrocity committed by Donald Trump, an American monster who I think was even beyond Phil’s imagining; Ochs was, in fact, a deeply patriotic man.

And I think we all need to keep these lyrics of Phil’s in mind, remembering that beauty comes in many forms, shapes and sizes.

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​You must protest, you must protest; it is your diamond duty;

and ah, but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.

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