If you grew up in a simpler, more wholesome, more innocent time, as I did, you began asking and answering the musical question “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” in elementary school, or even earlier, at Mother’s knee. Although we merely ate crayons and sniffed glue in those days, rather than eating Tide Pods and sniffing Sharpies like today’s youngsters, it is abundantly apparent to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that the more recent and progressive approach to childrearing and the more subtle forms of behavior modification in general have brought us a more peaceful, stable, and tolerant society, one in which we can all be proud of the manners, morals, and attainments of the Nation’s Youth, whether or not they receive assault rifles as Christmas presents.

Progress is real, progress is salutary, and progress bids us critically examine with fortitude and an open mind even those things that we cherish. Thus, although I appreciate a rollicking tune as much as the next person, I believe that the traditional lyrics of “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” must be consigned to the past, much like the casually racist opening lines of “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” to say nothing of “Ming Ling, Laundry Man” in my brother’s elementary piano instruction book.

I would like to think that none of us in this enlightened epoch would approve of putting the inebriated mariner in a longboat till he’s sober,........

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