I've been watching the 35th Annual Blues Music Awards, recorded a while back from PBS, in segments of fifteen minutes or so every day while I eat my lunch. This is taken from that broadcast. I had never heard of Doug MacLeod before Tuesday.
"Protest songs," as they used to be called in the '60s, generally fail to move me. They tend to be heavy-handed, and are almost by definition didactic, and more importantly too general and abstract. It's difficult to speak movingly of broad conditions: of poverty, war, racism, or unspecified "injustice." This song can be taken as a broad social complaint, and it isn't exactly subtle, but one reason it works is that it's directed at specific acts on the part of individuals. I don't think the person addressed is necessarily a single actual person, but he's a type we all recognize (probably). It's a relatively small crime, but I find the abuse of handicapped parking by able-bodied people especially contemptible. Like this singer, I would not be able to respect anyone who did it. I mean, really, man?
Light On Dark Water 
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