Rejected Carols
(This is something I wrote out of boredom some time last year and just re-discovered.)
Jim,
Sorry for the delayed response, but I’ve had a full plate in recent months. Despite the fact that the holiday season is long behind us, I felt it only polite to get back to you about your various pitches for holiday albums and songs for our recording artists. Because we solicited everyone in the office as well as the artists themselves for ideas, most did not make the cut. Unfortunately, as you well know, that refers to all of yours. I’ll just briefly let you know why each was passed on. I feel it’s only fair.
-We loved your idea of getting popular young artists to record a song or album for our Jewish consumers. However, having Miley Cyrus and Norah Jones release a duet as “Hanukkah Montanukkah” and “Menorah Jones” is never going to happen. We felt that your inclusion of “The Jewness Brothers” was also ridiculous, but their management has actually shown interest for next year. Everyone, however, felt like “Dr. Dreidel” was just over the top. You seemed more interested in puns at that point than genuine ideas.
-We treasure our country artists and understand that many of them and their fans are not pleased with the results of the 2008 election, but your proposed re-write of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” was highly offensive.
-Kid Rock is obviously one of the greatest musical artists of his generation, so at first we were thrilled with the concept of a Christmas music video of him singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” But dressing up “that midget he owns” (your words) as an elf in the video is something that we are not comfortable with. This is because it seems both exploitative and derogatory, but mostly because he is dead. I did not even read your new lyrics for the song, but the spelling of “coming” in the title alone was inappropriate.
-Do I even have to tell you that your original rap composition, “My **** is Baby Jesus and Your ***** is the Manger,” is offensive on several levels?
I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that you do not work here and that we would really appreciate it if you stopped sleeping in our stairwell.
Thanks again,
Timothy Reynolds
VP of Marketing
