Lou Reed: "Is common ground a word or just a sound?"
In 1989, Lou Reed released his unusually direct and political album New York. This very well-received album expresses Reed's frustration on many subjects. He seemed to fear that the young people he was seeing weren't politically engaged; many were apathetic and some were lost to drugs and alcohol; he despaired of seeing friends die of AIDS; he was beginning to appreciate that the natural world was dying; and in this song, Good Evening, Mr. Waldheim, he was sick and tired of anti-semitism in general and, particularly, anti-semitism and its corresponding hypocrisy in politics.
This song is still very relevant and powerful today. It's been going through my mind for several months, likely because incidents of anti-semitism are appearing almost daily in the news, all over the world, reaching to the highest level of politics in some European countries. When it first came out, I didn't understand some of the references. But one lyric that I immediately recognized, and still gives me chills, is:
Oh common ground,
Remember those civil rights workers buried in the ground?
Some references explained:
July 1987 Pope Capitulated Too Much in Meeting with Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim, the unrepentant Nazi officer, hijacked the Pope and the Vatican for his own whitewashing purposes.
When Waldheim left Rome last Friday after his audience with Pope John Paul II, he is quoted as saying to the press that his meeting with the Pontiff was “a much greater success than he had expected.”
Waldheim had good reason for feeling jubilant. Despite the year-long controversy over the Austrian president’s Nazi past — and his lying about and denying that past for some 40 years — the Pope chose not to make a single public reference to those grim facts. Instead, the Pontiff spoke of Waldheim in idealized terms of being “a diplomat and foreign minister as well as your activity in the United Nations…always dedicated to the securing of peace among all countries.”
https://www.jta.org/1987/07/01/archive/behind-the-headlines-pope-capitulated-too-much-in-meeting-with-waldheim
Waldheim Knighted by Pope, Drawing Protests From Israel
Earlier this year, a report by the Justice Department said Mr. Waldheim had "occupied positions of increasing responsibility and sensitivity, for which he was decorated, in regions where notoriously brutal actions were undertaken by the Nazi forces in which he served."
The report accused the former Austrian leader of having served with units that massacred civilians, executed prisoners and identified Jews for deportation. Although Mr. Waldheim has repeatedly denied responsibility for war crimes, the Justice Department called his disavowals unconvincing. The former Secretary General has been barred from entering the United States since 1987.
In that same period, however, Pope John Paul has seemed to brush aside the controversy surrounding Mr. Waldheim, who is a Catholic, receiving him twice at the Vatican. Spoke on Pope's Behalf.
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/06/world/waldheim-knighted-by-pope-drawing-protests-from-israel.html
From the website Political Tunes:
He sings about the “common ground.” This usually means finding what ideas people share to unite them. Reed seems to mean this as giving other groups their fair shake, respect and acknowledging their past sacrifices and hardships.
Examples in the bouncy rocker are double standards for Reed: that some seek common ground with other groups in society, but not Jews? It is to him a reflexive anti-Semitism that is given a free pass. Reed feels this is hypocrisy from some people, like civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Champions of racial equality in America can better appreciate what Jewish people have endured.
https://politicaltunes.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/lou-reed-good-evening-mr-waldheim/
