Miles's blog

Apparently there is a hit record (#3 on Billboard) called “Pumped Up Kicks.” The lyrics of the chorus include the phrase: “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks/You better run, better run, outrun my gun.” At another point I think he says he wants to shoot his father. When the song was recorded the group did not have a recording contract, little surprise if this is the kind of tripe they put out.

However, through the ubiquitous influence of the internet, this thing caught fire. The writer and frontman of the band, “Foster the People” is Mark Foster. (He named the band after himself, what a humble guy.) In an Entertainment Weekly interview he first expressed his surprise at the success of the song in the only way most twentysomethings (excluding my daughter) seem to be able to talk. “It’s fucking weird.” I bet it fucking is.

Entertainment Weekly asked this rocket scientist (and I realize this guy I am ridiculing is probably going to make more off this song that I have made in the past five years) why his violent screed (my words, not theirs) touched so many people. His answer is truly frightening.

“I wanted to write the chorus like the lyrics to a hip-hop song (it is nice to know he has such impressive influences). Like, ‘Here’s who I am, I’m tougher than you and I’ll fuck you up.’ I think a lot of people feel that way.”

Forgetting his valley-girl manner of utilizing the word “like” (obviously a Clueless fan), and that the lyrics to the song are virtually incomprehensible, his sentiment reflects a generation whose priorities are completely, in his words “fucked up.”

A lot of people really want to show that they are tougher than each other and to demonstrate they are willing to shoot? Unfortunately, he probably is right. For some reason our society has embraced toughness as the primary attribute. Ideas like teamwork, cooperation, sacrifice, kindness, compassion, even basic civility, seem old-fashioned. Everybody has to be a tough guy. On top of it all, everyone demands respect. That respect needs to be earned, and that others also deserve respect are concepts lost to this “me-first” mentality.

I was riding with Sgt. Wagner a few weeks ago when the police were called out to handle a problem at a sketchy apartment complex. The complex’s security guard had gotten into a verbal confrontation with one of the residents over loud music. The problem boiled down to the resident’s perception that he was not treated with respect. I think to him respect meant a level of fear. He was not going to take that. Even from an armed security guard. So he shined his flashlight in the guard’s face while challenging him. Fortunately the guard acted with restraint and called the police. Had Mark Foster been working security I imagine his response would have been something like “You better outrun my gun.”

I have seen so many murders and assaults which are the direct result of this attitude. Gang members are particularly sympatico with Foster. They are willing to kill in cold blood (primarily from a distance or in the back) over their perceived lack of respect. The problem with Foster’s attitude is that this is a zero-sum game. In actuality, only one guy is tougher than everyone else, and that guy is certainly willing to fuck Foster up in ways the singer can only have nightmares about, with the barest of provocation. Before Foster, and the millions of misguided morons who are going to make him a millionaire, even forsee trouble coming, someone like Francisco Martinez (the killer of Brandy Duvall) and other sociopaths will prove who really is tougher, and who really can fuck people up, and by that I mean kill.

The problem, of course, is not Foster. He is just some, probably, suburban-raised mama’s boy who has adopted the common attitude of America today. The primary problem is the media, which promotes this “toughness above all” demeanor, and the do-gooders who think the main problem with disenfranchised youth is lack of self-esteem. Believe me, idiots like Foster and his fans, and the Francisco Martinez’s of the world have plenty of self-esteem. What they lack is compassion, empathy, self-sacrifice, and, oh yeah, respect for others.

I guess Foster has to fuck me up now to prove how tough he is.