Has Hillary Clinton seen the video for the Golden Earring song she plays?

Jeroen says: "Hillary Clinton is using a controversial Golden Earring song in her campaign called "When The Lady Smiles." It is a great song, but I was wondering whether Hillary really know that in the video for that song a nun is raped, and the attacker's brain gets eaten by a dog." Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Cpt. Tim

she was too busy freaking out over the fact that if you were bound set and determined to make the necessary changes, and had the pc version, you could watch clothed people rub on each other in GTA: San Andreas.

thats ignoring the fact that if you’re bound set and determined you can alter almost any video game to do naughty things.
Yankadian

I did not know that Celine Dion is Black.
dutch muslim

f s mrcn wlk n my strt rn hm vr wth my cr
Certhas

@29 LOL. Literally. :D
Idle Tuesday

First she picks a Celine song and now this?! She IS the frickin’ Anti-Christ! BE GONE, BEELZEBUB!
Idle Tuesday

Hey what about Trent and David’s “I’m Afraid of Americans.” My favourite song since the liberation of Iraq started.
Certhas

In general, the US (and EU) has imposed free trade on a lot of nations in the past decades, and benefited from it massively.

Its about the most immoral thing you could think of to now turn around and say: “Oh you want to sell your software/culture/labor on our markets to? Not just the other way around? Sorry nope, cant do that need to close the market/borders”.
Idle Tuesday

As far as songs about raping nuns go…this is my favourite. Maybe she should play “Twilight Zone” in the next round…I love those neo-Nazi hotties dancing around.
jonathan29

@#1

Whoa, are you ever gonna be mad when you figure out where you guys got the statue of liberty.
Motisbeard

t mks prfct sns t m. Th rpst s mrc, th nn s rq, nd th dg s Hllry Clntn. Wht thy dn’t shw y n th vd s tht th rpst gs rght n rpng th nn n spt f hvng hd hs brn tn.

Ths f y wh r plnnng n vtng fr Hllry Clntn bcs sh’s wmn: Y’r sxsts. Ths f y wh r vtng fr bm bcs h’s blck: Y’r rcsts.

Hllry wn’t b ndng th wr n rq nd dsn’t vn prtnd tht sh wll; bm sys h wll bt hs vtng rcrd shws n ntrstwrthy flp-flppr wh sys wht h thnks vtrs wnt t hr t th mmnt. Nthr f thm r gng t nd th phny wr n Trrr, nthr f thm r gng t gt rd f th Ptrt ct, nd nthr f thm r gng t cls Gntnm, rstr hbs crps, r gv p ny f th dsgstng nd frghtnng xctv prvlgs tht Bsh hs gthrd t th Prsdncy, ths rmvng th chcks nd blncs blt nt r gvrnmnt.
MooiMeisje

Golden Earring aren’t German. They are Dutch. I know it’s not easy for most Americans to make the distinction.

What is the big deal if she chose the song and the video is weird. Half of the videos for music are bizarre or worse. It’s just a song and I happen to think it’s a nice song. Forget the video.
mokey

spkng f nn rp, r fckng, nd blck flg – cvr rt frm blck flg’s slp t n? th cnflnc f cmmnt lmnts crtd th prfct strm. f crs, h cld sly b gng fr th nn’s mth, bt lwys thght th d f r fckng ws fnny.
hoffmanbike

@#26 i agree, but whoever Nimoy endorses will be more logical
MooiMeisje

[[#52 pstd by dtch mslm , Jnry 29, 2008 3:59 M
f s mrcn wlk n my strt rn hm vr wth my cr]]

Gt t rply t ths. Wy t prptt nt-Mslm flngs, gy. Nw, my crrct yr f*ckd p nglsh?

f s n mrcn wlkng dwn my strt, wld rn hm vr wth my cr.

Thr. ll bttr. Nw, bt y dn’t vn wn cr nd f y d, t’s prbbly mrcn-md!
Electricdisk

I was about to say this was untrue. There is NO WAY her campaign would be so stupid to use this song (with the lyrics posted above) and the terrible video that goes with the song…

However, a quick look at the band’s website confirms the truth. Yes, it is true.

http://www.golden-earring.nl/news/detail.php?id=65
Astronaut 7

Wait, wait, wait a minute. US politics is about a friggin’ song? I can’t believe there is a theme song in the first place let alone people discussing whether or not it has merit. This is the kind of crap that made you guys fall asleep at the switch and screwed over the entire world with two terms of idiot monkey-boy Bush and the SS puppetmasters.

Well, there you go. I’m on the no-fly list.
mercermachine

#52 dutch muslim: Just curious, but how would you know he/she was American? They look an awful lot like Canadians, I hear.
Nils Holgerson

@#58 mercermachine:
If ths prsn s rlly ft;chwng n Bg Mc nd s skng 4 wd, then this person usually is an American. Enough said?
Mark Twain

Golden earring is Dutch! The Dutch who were the ‘real’founders of Manhattan. Of course non of that is being told in your historybooks!
RichSPK

Some people (such as me, often) just listen to the music and don’t pay attention to videos.
The Mood Indicator

I advise Obama to use this Golden Earring track for his campaign. http://audioscreen.blogspot.com/search/label/MP3%20track
ToPRoB

Reaction from Holland:
I think the Clintons are big Golden Earing fans.
Bill C. used the song “Radar love” for his campaign, as well a song from Golden E.

And funny: Miss C. and her team didn’t ask permission from Golden E. to use the song…..

Well, look at the state the US economy is in, I think there’s no money left to pay for royalties, LOL
ErwinDutchMan

Where stays my comment??
MyFacialTreatment

Hillary, you need more research next time
mmbb

I cannot find a reference to either “Golden Earring” or “When the Lady Smiles” by searching her site with Google (+site:hillaryclinton.com to query).

Google News contains one reference (from the disreputable source of the Huffington Post), and all generic web searches seem to be blogspam.

Verification, please?
jimtealiii

Perhaps there is some kind of subtext here.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Thank you, Takuan. Thank you, Lou. I wonder what he thinks moderators are for?

Storytellers tease out threads, so perhaps that’s the answer. One of my favorite word origins is that clew or clue was originally the loose end of a skein, and thus the starting point for rolling the whole thing up into a ball.
eti

What a great parody of a bad ’80s video.

Oh, wait…
kray

the dude looks like rufus sewell from dark city.
dan667

You have to wonder if the Clintons and her people are in touch with reality sometimes. This seems like something that would have been looked at closely. Seems like there are just way to many oops, look the other way from the Clintons.
Stephen

You have to wonder if Boing Boing and its readers are in touch with reality sometimes. The Clinton campaign does NOT use this as a campaign song. At one campaign stop, the local staff in Cedar Falls put it on 8 songs before the song they played before the candidate came out. That is the entire extent of the connection between this song and the Clinton campaign. The rest is pure drivel.
Antinous

How do you measure the purity of drivel?
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

It looks to me like the most significant comment was posted by Stephen (41):

“The Clinton campaign does NOT use this as a campaign song. At one campaign stop, the local staff in Cedar Falls put it on 8 songs before the song they played before the candidate came out. That is the entire extent of the connection between this song and the Clinton campaign.”

Recall also (#67) that the lyrics are relatively innocuous, the video with the nun and all was banned from MTV, and a second video was made.

I have to ask: have we been falling for anti-Hillary campaign propaganda? The closer I look at this thing, the less I see any grounds for giggle.

Onward.

Doomslang (16), welcome and stick around. You’ll get other chances.

MadJo (19), I’ll swap you American tourists who think y’all are into wooden shoes and windmills for European tourists who worriedly ask Arizonans whether they have to carry guns when crossing a Tohono O’odham reservation.

Jonathan V. (25): First: Who notices the nationality of entertainers? When people in this thread were making jokes about endorsements by William Shatner, did you automatically think “Hey, he’s Canadian”? Did you even know that James Doohan was too?

People in the U.S. just blithely assume that anyone who isn’t obviously foreign must be from the states. We’re vaguely aware that Celine Dion, Leonard Cohen, and k.d. lang are Canadian. We’re less clear about Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Cowboy Junkies, Rush, Paul Shaffer, Guy Lombardo, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Hank Snow, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Oscar Peterson, and Robbie Robertson, to name but a few.

And then there’s the “American movie and television industry,” which would have to include Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Norman Jewison, James Cameron, Lorne Michaels, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Marie Dressler, Ruby Keeler, Fay Wray, Walter Huston, Jay Silverheels, Yvonne De Carlo, Rich Little, Mort Sahl, Lorne Greene, Monty Hall, Genevieve Bujold, Donald Sutherland, Leslie Nielsen, David Cronenberg, Margot Kidder, Michael J. Fox, Dan Akroyd, Pamela Anderson, Matthew Perry, Mike Myers, Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and (for pete’s sake) Alex Trebek.

Want me to prove how little we notice nationality? You’re making a big fuss about Celine Dion. Did you notice Bill Clinton using “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” as his theme song? That’s by Fleetwood Mac, which through its many incarnations has primarily been a British group. And how about Al Gore using You Can Call Me Al off Paul Simon’s Graceland? The liner notes on that one read like a U.N. phone directory.

Second: using only U.S.-made music would be a trivial and meaningless gesture. The music industry is international, and the money involved would be insignificant. We don’t need to waste campaign-year bandwidth on trifles.

Third, and this is a generally applicable rule, the neighbor you beggar is a lost customer. As it happens, the United States makes a lot more money marketing music and entertainment to the rest of the world than we pay out for theirs. This is not an issue we really want to pursue.

MyFacialTreatment (36), ElectricDisk (35), Dan667 (40), Dave Hecht (45), see above. I don’t think you can make any generalizations about Hillary Clinton or her campaign organization from this story.

Antinous, Geno (42,44), good on you both.

Cowicide (47), that is literally the first time I’ve had any idea what the lyrics are to “Lust for Life.” I’m with Antinous on this one: in the end, the meaning of a song is what it means to its fans.

Earring Fan (70), thank you. We’re doing our best.
jessek

I’m more shocked that there’s a Golden Earring song that isn’t “Twilight Zone” or “Radar Love”.
Geno Z Heinlein

> How do you measure the purity of drivel?

On a scale of -1 to +14, with -3 representing Neal Stephenson and +17 representing the combined drivel of the Bush administration.
Dave Hecht

Reminds me of when her event staff accidentally played Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack” instead of “New York State of Mind” and it was broadcast live nationwide. D’oh! She seems to have a knack for these wee slips.

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/12044920
Roach

Next up: John McCain walks onstage to the dulcet tones of Turbonegro.
jonathan_v

Would this be the same Hillary Clinton that chose a campaign song for her US Presidential bid written and performed by a Canadian?

Gotta love that partriotism.
Antinous

She’s softening them up for the takeover.
Cowicide

LOL… Reminds me of when Carnival Cruises or whatever was using part of the “Lust for Life” song without lyrics in their TV spots.. Whenever it came on, I used to sing out the lyrics to whoever was in earshot, ha…

Lyrics:

Here comes johnny yen again
With the liquor and drugs
And the flesh machine
Hes gonna do another strip tease.
Hey man, whered ya get that lotion?
Your skin starts itching once you buy the gimmick
About something called love
Love, love, love
Well, thats like hypnotizing chickens.

Well, Im just a modern guy Of course, Ive had it in the ear before And Ive a lust for life (lust for life) cause Ive a lust for life (lust for life)

Be one hell of a cruise, I guess… liquor, drugs and ear fucking.
IWood

Forcible nun sex and canine neural snacking?

Makes sense to me.

Hillary ’08!
Antinous

Cowicide,

Go to an American wedding and the drunken guests are gonna get up and ‘dance’ to the Village People’s YMCA, a song about anonymous gay sex in a facility filled with children.

Also, those Lust for Life commercials – the snorkeling father, who says something about manta rays looking like giant portabella mushrooms, stars in those soft core porn movies that premium cable shows late at night. Carnival Cruises really was working the subtext. Maybe on purpose.
mujadaddy

Would this be the same Hillary Clinton that chose a campaign song for her US Presidential bid written and performed by a Canadian?

No, I don’t think it’s the same one. :/
LOLcat Stevens

I hear that John Edwards is re-envisioning his campaign, and he’ll be kicking off the next few stops backed by the upbeat strumming of Minor Threat.

Pass it on, kids…
cteegarden

Given how campaigning works, I doubt she chose it. She probably just approved it and put too high an amount of trust in the people who selected it.

As for it being Canadian, so what? I’d like a president who’s less jingoistic.
gretagretchen

Never mind Hilary — WTF? on that video.

I think they used the choreography in “Twilight Zone”
Juvarra

The Golden Earring is Dutch, but the lead singer Barry Hay is English-Dutch. Which may be even worse for the flag waving jingoists. :)
MooiMeisje

Ah I see that some of the posts are being censored. Too bad.

I’m an American. I would never say if I saw a Muslim in the street I’d run them over. I can’t speak for my government, which I did NOT elect. Don’t colour all people with one brush. That’s called being ignorant.

Hilary Clinton didn’t see the video or she wouldn’t have chosen the song. But I doubt she’s worried about that right now. ;-) All she wants to do is win an election. She could do a hell of a lot worse than not seeing a Golden Earring vid.
Juvarra

@#27 posted by Haldor

Is this the same US government which is constant lecturing about open markets? I doubt they would appreciate it if other countries bought only domestic products.
MooiMeisje

Trs, s t jst my cmptr thn tht shws psts mssng chrctrs t mk thm n-rdbl? Lk t pst 52, 59, 71…

Thnks fr lblng m. mdrtr y r nt. Mdrtrs dn’t mk prsnl nslts. Dsmvwlld s nt wrd. Prhps y mnt dsmbwld. Cls…bt dsn’t rlt t th cnsrshp n hr.

Kt thrd.
Mark Temporis

Hey, Jon, Canadian? This song has that beat: Golden Earring are German!
David

You lost me at Golden Earing and great song.
loudiamondphillips

uh-oh….Teresa may have called you “stupid”, but you just called *her* a Moderator Nazi.
Church

German Nun-Rapers for Hillary!
pork musket

Prsnlly thnk S Pltcs cld s bt mr nn-rp.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Mooimeisje: If that’s all you can see, you’re stupid and I can’t help you.

In your place, I’d have asked politely why my comment was disemvowelled. I’d also like to think I’d have more sense than to refer to the process going on as “censorship.”
EdT.

kiss <> rape
bergeijk

Golden Earring is Dutch, not German
Spoon

Where was the nun rape?
Takuan

I happen to like our resident Norn.
gonggong

cant help scoolmastering, but this band is NOT German:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Earring

they come from Netherlands.

…at least not from the country which is famous for geographic knowledge.
EdT.

Whoops, HTML ate my greater than symbol. It was supposed to be:

kiss {does not equal} rape
doomslang

#12
I just signed up for a boing boing account just to say that and you beat me to it.
batu b

not german, not canadian, but DUTCH. What do all white people look the same to you? :)
Antinous

In my reality, sticking a slimy part of your body into the orifice of an unwilling victim is rape. Please tell me that the terms of your probation don’t permit you to date.
Cowicide

LOLcat Stevens, maybe he’ll play “White Minority” by Black Flag instead. I’m sure that’d go over well.
madjo

@#17, one of the earlier songs presidential-candidate Hillary Clinton chose as campaign song was from an Air Canada ad. (made by a Canadian), and this song is indeed Dutch.
But meh, a lot of Americans think that we Dutchmen, all of us, wear wooden shoes all day, smoking pot, while working at windmills or farms all day.
jetsetsc

Oy vey. Great song? The nun raping is about all it’s got going for it. Really.
CountSmackula

@ LOLCAT Stevens

Hmmm… “Small Man, Big Mouth”, “Out of Step”, or “Guilty of Being White”?

ROFLMMFAO!!
pork musket

@19 – Don’t you also have to take turns plggng th hls n th dks wth yr fngrs?
Antinous

If Clotho spins it, Lachesis measures it and Atropos cuts it, which one teases out some of the fibers?
Takuan

the same, in her aspect as Themis
NE2d

In my reality, sticking a slimy part of your body into the orifice of an unwilling victim is rape.

In your reality, sure. In the reality of the rest of us, not so much. cf. your state’s criminal code.

And man was that a terrible song.
jenjen

Gee, that song is full of great inspirational lyrics for her campaign…

- – -

When the lady smiles,
She holds me in her hand
As a matter of fact,
She could always let me down

…and…

My friends tell me,
She’s the beast inside your paradise
I guess you’ve heard it all before
A fallen angel,
That has got you hypnotized
And that always needs some more

- – -

Unless it’s some kind of inside joke or an old favorite song, it seems like a weird choice.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Did Hillary Clinton or her people see the video you’re all referring to? I sincerely doubt it. Recall that that video was banned from MTV.

However, there was a recut second version of the video circulated in the United States. If the Clinton campaign saw that second video, and looked at the song’s lyrics, they’d have no reason to think the song was objectionable.

The video of a song is not the song. It’s a separate work that uses the song as its soundtrack.
Tensegrity

Video aside, what about the lyrics to the song? “She’s the beast inside your paradise…
A fallen angel…” Perhaps this is proof that she is the anti-Christ and her rise to power foretells the coming Rapture. Or not. In any case, a very questionable musical choice.
ninjah

Reminds me of the time when Ford used the radio edit of “Let’s Get Retarded” by the Black Eyed Peas for their TV commercials. The radio version says “Let’s get it started” but everyone who heard the original knows what’s up. (Buy a Ford, get retarded!)
jonathan_v

I was speaking in reference to Hillary choosing a Celine Dion (Canadian) song as her official campaign song in mid-2007.

I think nationality in stuff like this is a big issue- the US economy is faltering, much in part to a large imbalance in international trade.

In the ’04 elections, candidates touted how they would keep americans employed… while the republican party used offshore labor to build and manage websites.

In the ’08 election, candidates like Clinton are using Canadian and Dutch musicians for their campaigns. The US economy isn’t great, and more industries are being outsourced. To me as a voter, knowing that a royalty check is being sent overseas instead of to a US artist is a huge issue.

I’m not waving a flag in blind patriotism, or calling out any one side in partisanism – they both do it. With an economy going into recession and increased unemployment due to offshoring labor, I think candidates need to be called out on stuff like this.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

“Up against the wall, Fred.”
Earring Fan

Hey Americans! You maby new President has got great taste on music.
If you forget the clip, the song is a great one.Why does a campain song has to be from an american band? WE dutch people welcome any music which is good. The Golden Earring is a most respected dutch band famous for almost 45 years now in the netherlands and beyond.

Way to go Hilary! I which you American pleople a great new President. Choose whisely!
Tensegrity

@25 Well, that is all well and good but let’s face it, an endorsement from Shatner would equal a vote from me.
Haldor

Jonathan –

Why not take it a step further? Since government, in theory should exist for the benefit of the people, I would argue that all purchases made by the government (goods, services and labor)should be domestic. I’m not anti-foreign product but if the US government is supposed to be by and for the people, than support those people, and the economy, by always purchasing domestic services when possible.