My TakeSaving women, and rugby fans, from Tom Jones’ misogynist ‘Delilah’
- Western culture is being sanitised, as supposedly sexist and racist contents are ‘cancelled’ to make the arts safe for the overly sensitive
My late father hummed Tom Jones’ “Delilah”, one of his all-time favourites, all the time. So My, my, my, Delilah/Why, why, why, Delilah were among the first few English words I knew as a child, long before I learned the language.
Imagine my surprise to read that organisers of Welsh international rugby matches in Cardiff have cancelled the song from the list of their choirs because it’s about violence against women. You know the lines: She stood there laughing/I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.
In case you didn’t know, Welsh sports fans love to sing along during matches. The BBC approvingly quoted domestic abuse campaigner Rachel Williams: “I loved the song [“Delilah”], but stopped singing it when I realised it was about glorifying the murder of a woman. We shouldn’t normalise lyrics like this and should continue to call them out.”
This is the cultural moment at which the West has found itself.
Just to be thorough, though, authorities should delete all the recordings of the triumphant rendition of the song by Jones at the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, to which tens of thousands sang along outside her palace. Prince Harry was filmed among the VIP audience mouthing the words. Guess he will now have to issue an apology and declare, with the help of his wife, the Duchess of Sussex and Queen of Woke, that he opposes absolutely and resolutely violence against women.
Come to think of it, the name Delilah should be banned, as it is sexist because it’s associated with “treacherous and voluptuous” women since the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah, who took bribes from the Philistines to destroy her lover. Just like Lolita, have you ever come across a person with that name? Me neither.