The Finger

The-Finger-Best-Of.mp3
The-Finger-Best-Of.mp4
The-Finger.mp3
The-Finger.mp4
The-Finger-Unplugged-Underground-XXVI.mp3
The-Finger-Unplugged-Underground-XXVI.mp4
The-Finger-Unplugged.mp3
The-Finger-Unplugged.mp4
The-Finger-intro.mp3

[Intro]
The finger
(Will linger)

[Verse 1]
Like a bad aftertaste
Won’t let it go to waste
Gonna leave a sign
Of the time

[Chorus]
The finger
(Will linger)
An F U
(Is past due)

[Bridge]
Here’s a salute
(From the destitute)
The finger
(Will linger)

[Verse 2]
Flipping the bird
At the absurd
It’s about time
You read between the lines

[Chorus]
The finger
(Will linger)
An F U
(Is past due)

[Bridge]
Here’s a salute
(From the destitute)
The finger
(Will linger)

[Chorus]
The finger
(Will linger)
An F U
(Is past due)

[Bridge]
Here’s a salute
(From the destitute)
The finger
(Will linger)

[Outro]
The finger
(Will linger)
An F U
(Just for you)
Tramplin’ rights
(Just ain’t right)
See the light

ABOUT THE SONG

PSA: “Killing humor isn’t funny. Kill humor, kill freedom. Not so funny now, is it?”

As an investigative journalist with decades of experience defending the First Amendment, I’ve endured more than my share of danger. My life has been threatened, my family targeted. I’ve been assaulted by both criminals and police, fined, arrested, jailed, and dragged through years of court battles. But never — not once — have I seen anything as alarming as what is happening today. During one period of being illegally detained, silenced, and stripped of my rights, I adopted the pseudonym Mootmute. What is a moot mute? Well, imagine being forced into silence until your very voice becomes a moot point. If you were a town crier and the Queen cut out your tongue, how would you tell the people? If you were a writer pressed so hard that you had to invoke your Fifth Amendment rights, would you become a moot mute? That’s the absurdity of censorship — to be muted into irrelevance.

Much to my amusement, when under oath I would ask prosecutors what I wasn’t allowed to say. Their response? They wheeled in file cabinets overflowing with papers they themselves had published, and read aloud, line by line, everything that was now forbidden speech.

Anyway, that’s the name — mootmute. They tried to silence me, to turn me into a moot mute. Instead, they became my unwitting mouthpiece.

At the same time I was being attacked personally, my publishing company was also targeted, along with the entities that had licensed my intellectual property. To protect the innocent, I created a new publishing company. Much like Prince, who famously changed his name to a symbol when stripped of his own, I adopted a symbol too — only mine was built from ASCII characters and represented “the finger.” The irony was delicious. Every time the prosecutors wheeled in stacks of paper — their own publications — and read the forbidden words into the record, each page carried my publishing company’s logo at the bottom. The very logo of defiance they were trying to erase stared back at them from their own exhibits.

In addition, for added fun and a bit of legal one-upmanship, I included a copyright notice on every page: “These pages and their content may not be used without our expressed written consent. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed under the law.” So in their zeal to prosecute me, they unwittingly added yet another crime to the list — publishing my work without consent, while declaring in court that no one was allowed to say what they themselves had just published.

The Present: The Death of the First Amendment: Trump’s War on Free Speech

A Call to Arms
In protest of the ongoing assault on free speech — and in support of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and the many journalists slaughtered around the world this year — I’ve decided to return to my roots: satirical wit, where words cut sharper than swords. Long live comedy! It’s time for all of us to pick up the torch and rise. Get your satire on — let’s roll.

PSA: “Killing humor isn’t funny. Kill humor, kill freedom. Not so funny now, is it?”

From the album “Killing Humor (Isn’t Funny)“