The original tention of sail away was to make the listener uncomfortable. Newman takes a familiar figure, a salesman, an unchipiner and gives him a rollicking sea shanty. But then he forces you to acknowledge that underneath all that there lurks a monster. And so wog became one, and sail away became a glorified nursery rhyme.
If you disagree with someone — if you find what they think appalling — is there any value in talking to them? In the early 1970s, the talk show host Dick Cavett, the governor of Georgia Lester Maddox, and the singer Randy Newman tried to answer this question.
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