Go Retire Psychiatrist

Hey, last night Bobby D, Bob DeForest was covering the Friday night blues show and I heard a song that was new to me, “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover” by Albert Castiglia and featuring Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.

First of all, I found out a lot of people don’t understand the title and it’s an old saying which means that you shouldn’t made judgements about something or someone you don’t know much about other than the superficial appearance. According to one web source, one famous example that immediately comes to mind is Joseph Carey Merrick “The Elephant Man” who had severe physical deformities resulting from what was thought to be a severe case of neurofibromatosis but later was diagnosed with Proteus Syndrome. In the late 19^th century, he spent some in a traveling freak show before he was admitted to a London hospital. Despite his appearance, Joseph was far from being a monster. He was a sensitive and intelligent human being who sought only understanding and empathy from others.

I never saw “The Elephant Man” movie, but the line in it “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am…a man!” was not something Joseph Merrick ever said. Screenwriters wrote that.

When I was in junior high school, while students were in the hallway on their way to class, a fight broke out. Actually, it wasn’t really a fight. One guy was brutally beating another frail looking student bloody. The victim was a gay male. I don’t know exactly why the attacker did it, but I suspect it was because the victim moved and talked like a girl—and maybe got too close to him. The principal showed up and kicked him out of school immediately. Some students murmured that this was going make things bad for the attacker because his dad would probably beat hell out of him for getting himself kicked out. I don’t remember anyone mentioning anything about the victim. I kept my mouth shut, too. I was a skinny black boy and didn’t want to attract attention.

Judging a book by the cover can lead to another metaphor which is that doing so can have a “ripple effect.”

Hard to move on from that, but I think the point is clear. Anyway, the song “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover” was written by Willie Dixon and was performed by Bo Diddley in the early 1960s.