For the first of our seasonal Songs of the Week this December, here's a number that first appeared on the Hit Parade 60 Christmases ago - 1953 - and, despite a rather obvious period sensibility, has proved amazingly durable:
Santa Baby Slip a sable under the tree For me Been an awful good girl Santa Baby So hurry down the chimney tonight...
For most of those six decades, "Santa Baby" belonged all but exclusively to the lady who introduced it: Eartha Kitt. But Miss Kitt died on Christmas Day five years ago, since when Santa Baby has been bestowing sables on other vocalists somewhat promiscuously - to the point where it's now the best known of all Eartha's oeuvre.
-snip-
Last Christmas, reader Rick Sunderland wrote to ask if I'd noticed "the profusion of irony-free 'Santa Baby's" clogging the airwaves of late. By "irony-free" versions, I think Mr. Sunderland means that today's vocalists disdain the whole gal-on-the-make-using-her-feminine-wiles dynamic as deplorably sexist. Which it is. But take that out, as Taylor Swift and LeAnn Rimes and other contemporary chanteuses do, and there's not a lot left to the song — except a laundry list of expensive presents which the singer expects to get because hey, who deserves it more than totally awesome you, right? "Santa Baby" was never my favorite Christmas hit, but turning a song of seduction into a song of entitlement doesn't strike me as progress, not in the Brokest Nation in History. On the other hand, reborn as a checklist for Black Friday, at least it's no longer sexist: Michael Bublé recorded it as "Santa Buddy." Really.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
"Michael Bublé recorded it as "Santa Buddy." Really."
That's just sick.
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:50 am
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