“The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston…not so much because it is insipid and annoying, but because it is clearly inaccurate. You know how the song starts out:
I believe the children are our future;
Teach them well and let them lead the way.
Show them all the beauty they possess inside…
So far, a fairly straightforward evocation of romantic idealism. But then we get to the line where she asserts:
No matter what they take from me,
They can’t take away my dignity…
This claim, I submit, is obviously false. Right off the top of my head, I can think of several dozen ways to take away Whitney Houston’s dignity. What if they abduct her, paint her skin bright blue, and dress her up like Smurfette? What if they hire a team of muppeteers to follow her around with a life-size marionette that looks like her and mimics everything she does? What if they publish and distribute copies of her high school diary, in which she confesses in embarrassing detail her infatuation with Peter Tork? What if they drop her off in the middle of Times Square, completely naked except for two wooden toy ducks tied around her ankles?
Part of the problem is that she never really specifies who “they” are, so it’s kind of hard to gauge the resources they would be able to employ to take away her dignity. The song seems to imply that “they” have the power to take other things from her, though, so it seems reasonable to assume that they are operating on a level comparable to a well-funded government agency or corporation. Even if “they” turn out to have an extremely limited budget, however, there are plenty of penny-conscious ways to take away someone’s dignity. They could post Photoshopped pictures of her in bed with Adam Sandler. They could covertly switch her shampoo with a depilatory cream, or give her some of that novelty toothpaste that turns your teeth black. They could place an invisibly fine string in front of her door, right at face level, so every time she leaves the house she does that little spastic spiderweb dance. They could mail all her friends bootleg copies of that Kevin Costner movie she starred in, or that one episode of “Gimme a Break!” she was in way back when.
If she is scheduled to attend a meeting of record company executives, someone could sneak in a few minutes ahead of time and tape a small cassette recorder to the underside of her chair, then hit “PLAY;” the cassette would have 20 minutes or so of silence (long enough for everyone to get seated and the meeting to start), and then a really loud fart sound would erupt from Whitney Houston’s chair. Presto, instant lack of dignity.
What makes you think you’re so special, Whitney Houston? Do you have such faith in the unassailable quality of your dignity that you must needs challenge people to rob you of it? Where I come from, that’s called hubris. Trust me, I’m an expert on the subject of lost dignity.