Phil Ochs-Outside a Small Circle of Friends.

[Affair on Touhy Ave.]

I'm a little confused by this song. Especially the 1st verse and about a lady being grabbed by a group of people and being stabbed to death and saying maybe we should call the cops and then maybe not. Can't remember the whole line I'm sure there's a valid point to the song and many of these folk songs but sometimes they're not always easy to get.

[brink-]

I haven't heard that song in eons, but I really liked Phil Ochs - brilliant songwriter.

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by Affair on Touhy Ave.:
Can't remember the whole line I'm sure there's a valid point to the song and many of these folk songs but sometimes they're not always easy to get. OK I googled for the title of the song
Google kindly corrected your typo!!
and found a number of sites quoting the lyrics such as:-
http://www.ocap.ca/songs/smalcirc.html
where the whole of the first verse is shown as:-

Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Two other verses start thus:-

Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
...
But we're busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times
and

Smoking marihuana is more fun than drinking beer,
comment on the song you mentioned is:-
"The first verse is a commentary on the murder of Kitty Genovese. She was murdered March 14th, 1964 in NYC. Dave Marulli supplies the following about this incident:"
This is a good description including the reaction of witnesses to the murder who said
"We didn't want to get involved"

Hundreds, if not thousands, of studies were done about this event

One study concluded that on average, if more than 4 people witness an event, nobody will do anything. Each person will say to themselves "I don't have to get involved since there are other people here who can help."

[Affair on Touhy Ave.]

Thanks.

[Auburn Annie]

I was 12 at the time but remember the case well. From "All About Kitty Genovese":

At about 3:50 a.m., a neighbor, Karl Ross, who lived on the second floor of Catherine’s building on Austin Street, finally called the police. But before he did, he called a friend in nearby Nassau County and asked his opinion about what he should do. After the police were notified, a squad car arrived within three minutes and quickly found Catherine’s body in the hallway on the first floor. She had been stabbed 17 times. Her torn and cut clothes were scattered about and her open wallet lay on the floor next to her. Her driver’s license identified her as Catherine Genovese. Detectives from the 112 responded and began an exhaustive investigation. It was a frigid, winter morning, and a brisk, unrelenting wind made it seem even colder. A canvass of the neighborhood turned up several witnesses, including the one who had notified the police. When cops finished polling the immediate neighborhood, they discovered at least 38 people who had heard or observed some part of the fatal assault on Kitty Genovese.

Kew Gardens is a residential area located at the center of the borough of Queens, one of the most populated communities in America. If Queens were a city, it would be America’s fifth largest. The area of Kew Gardens is generally middle class where houses in 1964 typically sold for $30,000 to $50,000. It resembled a small village in the suburbs rather than a city neighborhood. Mostly white, working class and typically one of the hundreds of small communities that make up metropolitan New York City, Austin Street is the focal point of the neighborhood. On this neat, picturesque avenue, there are shops, a small park and a busy train station where commuters catch the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central, 15 minutes away. Not the kind of place where one would think a person could be murdered without anyone offering even a smidgen of assistance.

“We thought it was a lover’s quarrel!” said one tenant. “Frankly, we were afraid,” said another witness. One woman who didn’t want her name used said, “I didn’t want my husband to get involved.” Others had different explanations for their conduct. “We went to the window to see what was happening, but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street.” There were lots of excuses. Maybe the most apathetic was the one who told reporters, “I was tired.” But the fact remained that dozens of people stood by and watched a woman being brutally assaulted for an extended period of time, and did nothing.

“If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now,” an assistant chief inspector told the press at the time. New York City Deputy Police Commissioner Walter Arm said, “This tendency to shy away from reporting crimes is a common one.” That was a revelation to the public. Some detectives were stunned. Others simply saw the unwillingness to get involved as representative of the times. Apathy, especially in urban settings, was everywhere, not only in Kew Gardens. In her own defense, one neighbor said she was too afraid to call. “I tried …I really tried,“ she said, “but I was gasping for air and was unable to talk into the telephone.”

As killings go, the murder of Catherine Genovese was not a spectacular one, nor did it generate much publicity when it happened. The original NYCPD complaint report reduced the episode to just five typewritten lines:

“Karl Ross…heard calls of help at his residence. He saw a woman later identified as Kitty Genovese F-W-28 lying face down in ground floor hallway, she was taken to QGH (Queens General Hospital) by… with multiple stab wounds and pronounced DOA…then taken to morgue.”

There were hundreds of killings in New York City in 1964 and 9,360 murders in America that year. A random killing in the street was not big news. The New York Times delegated a few short paragraphs to the incident on page 12. For two weeks, it lay dormant and gathered virtually no public attention. It wasn’t until March 27, when The Times published its famous “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call” article by Martin Gansberg, that the killing became big news. The New York City media picked up on the wider themes of the event. Camera crews and newscasters descended on Kew Gardens. The press searched the neighborhood for any scrap of uncovered information, no matter how small or insignificant. Kitty Genovese’s story began to take shape.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/kitty_genovese/4.html

[Affair on Touhy Ave.]

Why did he have to call a neighbor asking what he should do? He knew what to do. Speaking of stupidity, this summer marks the 40th aniversary for this http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/speck/index_1.html So far I only read half of it but 1 part mentioned 1 of the neighbors instead of calling the police right away she goes into the town home to take a look! I mean somebody says the student nurses have been murdered so call the police! Don't go in and look to see if it's true!

[ May 23, 2006, 18:03: Message edited by: Affair on Touhy Ave. ]

[vlmagee]

"I heard a woman scream for help while men stood by and offered their best wishes".

Now we can move the thread. Just kidding ...

[<jbt>]

thanks for bringing this up affair. phil ochs is one of my favorite songwriters and i just learned a lot more detail about "outside a small circle of friends" thanks to all of the responses. auburn annie, as with every topic involving phil, your response was nothing short of enlightening.
phil ochs felt that "not getting involved" was all too common in many americans at that time. whether it was civil rights or the war against the war, phil believed in the power of the people and that real change could be realized if only everyone cared enough to really try. He was disgusted as he continued to see injustice waged against a person, a people or a country, and there weren't too many songwriters better at pointing that out and crying for change.
it's a true shame he chose to go to sleep some 30 years ago, because we could really use him now.

[BILLW]

Originally posted by &lt;jbt&gt;:
it's a true shame he chose to go to sleep some 30 years ago, because we could really use him now. Well said jbt, the more things change the more they stay the same. "same as it ever was..."

Bill :)

[Don Quixote]

Thanks for the refresher on the details, Annie. Yes, it's all about the hypocrisy of people--let's think good thoughts for everyone, but let's not get personally involved. Phil Ochs was critical of many people, but saved some of his most ironic comments for those who agreed with him politically (he was a leftie), but didn't do anything to help the movement along, and got caught up in their own pleasures (hence, "Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer, etc.). One of his more famous topical songs was titled "Love me, I'm a liberal", and is a very caustic castigation of the "have a nice day but I won't do anything to make things better" crowd.
Political opinion, hope not to offend anyone, but-- the left could sure use someone like Ochs now to tell it like it is--are there really any Democratic candidates that one would feel proud to vote for because of his/her bold stands and willingness to stand up for a principle?
DQ