Remembering Dorothy Fields

Today is July 15, 2005, the centenary of Dorothy Fields. You know her, of course. She
wrote some of the greatest songs of the greatest song era in history. As in the Louis Armstrong
favorite:

Grab your coat and get your hat

Leave your worries on the doorstep

Life can be so sweet

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Or if you prefer there is the incomparable:

Someday, when I’m awfully low,

When the world is cold,

I will feel a glow just thinking of you

And The Way You Look Tonight.

They don’t make ’em like that any more and we know why. We don’t have innocent girls
with romance swirling in their heads any more. Instead we have Sex and the City
females who are welded to their cellphones and have a vocabulary anchored in “like” and “whatever.”

They are not women who fall in love; they are women who are “sexually
active.” What does that mean, you ask? It is liberal-speak for women
imagining they can live like men, treating their sexuality as a matter of getting laid. Sorry sisters, girls
have never felt like that. They can’t. That’s because sex is much bigger than the modern
concept of “an active sex life”. Sex is about generation, the next generation, and
the further you get from that truth, the less you will appreciate the songs
of Dorothy Fields.

Instead you will become the liberal who has made it a point never to have seen The Sound of Music.
There must be a lot of sophisticated liberals who have never seen The Sound of Music. Again
the reason is pretty simple. Liberals can’t deal with the hopelessly naïve Maria, the young girl that
just loves children and ends up snagging the fabulously rich guy just like a Jane Austen heroine. They want
irony.

They can have it. The rest of us want Dorothy Fields and “Big Spender.”

There is lots of stuff around about Dorothy Fields. You can start with
Mark Steyn’s article. Then there is a site in the UK
here. Then you can Google up more.