This definitely comes under “things I wish I’d never heard.” Thanks — I think — to a reader who brought it to my attention, although I would inevitably have had to face it sooner or later anyway.

Released on November 21st was a new 3-disc set from Tom Waits, called Orphans. Initially it might seem that it’s one of those collections of unreleased nuggets from down through time, like Dylan’s Bootleg Series, but no — it apparently consists largely of things recorded, or re-recorded, over the past three years.

What compels this post is a song called Road to Peace (see here for a free mp3 download). It is, no joking, Tom Waits’ own analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian situation. For a songwriter who has never (at least in my experience of his work) been remotely political, he sure knows where to start.

Waits delivers a turgid litany of journalistic details in this song, drawing direct equivalence between a suicide bombing by a Palestinian boy who had been filled with hate for Jews and an Israeli military attack on a Hamas terrorist leader.

If that’s all that the song did — put images of death side by side and say “why can’t we stop all the violence?” — it would be bad enough for being so naive, but it would merely place Waits squarely among all those who are only willing to condemn violence (the behavior) but are unwilling or unable to grasp any of the distinctions between the parties to the conflict. In shorthand, for Tom’s benefit: Israel is surrounded by enemies who make it crystal clear that they would gladly destroy it and its population if only they had the military capacity to do so. Indeed, they have attempted to do so. Israel, by contrast, has the capability to completely destroy its enemies but its people have instead demonstrated their willingness, repeatedly, to surrender land to those enemies in order to live in peace.

All this and more is too complicated, of-course — it’s much easier just to blame everyone equally and make sanctimonious demands for “peace.”

But in his song, Road to Peace, Tom Waits doesn’t stop with drawing precise equivalence between the parties. Towards the end of this sprightly number, he says the following (I’m not going to put it in verse form, because it’s not verse; it’s garbage):

The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace. But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?

So, Waits takes the very extreme position that Israel should be denied the sale of arms to defend itself. How long would Israel last in that neighborhood, subject to an arms embargo?

Waits makes no comment on Russia selling arms to Iran, while its president publicly predicts Israel’s destruction and openly works towards that end. Maybe that’s covered in another song; I don’t know.

I admit I feel a sense of the utterly bizarre, at the moment — sitting here making arguments like these, directed to Tom Waits, of all people.

To me, this Road to Peace recording seems less like a song, and more like Tom Waits having a Mel Gibson/Michael Richards moment. In all my years listening to Tom at his most demented, I never thought for a moment that he was genuinely insane. His songs have always been filled with heart and wit. Now, I find myself wondering if he’s genuinely checked out of his senses. It’s not only the opinions he expresses, which are sadly all too common, and might be attributed to ignorance instead of malevolence, but it’s his decision to put them into musical form and release them. What the hell was he thinking?

I will endeavor to file this away in my brain as just that: a psychotic episode on the part of the normally equaniminous Tom Waits. Perhaps I can compartmentalize it, and build a defensive fence around it, and go on valuing and enjoying some of the great stuff that Waits has done down through all these last thirty-plus years. Perhaps.

(And Bob Dylan has played Waits tunes about three times on his “Theme Time Radio Hour.” This is the thanks he gets!)

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

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