Make a Song for Taj: A Challenge

Syed Taj, a physician who formerly served on the Canton, MI city council, is running for Congress in Michigan’s 11th District. We made a song for Taj. Now we want YOU to make a song for Syed Taj.

A little background: The Republican incumbent was caught (either knowingly or not) forging signatures to get on the primary allowing Kerry Bentivolio to enter the race. Bentivolio is a disgraced for high school teacher from Fowlerville, MI who was repeatedly reprimanded for screaming at and threatening his students, among other things which I won’t mention here. If he wins, Bentivolio, a self interested and unemployable loser in all other respects, will walk into a cushy $174,000 a year job with health benefits for the rest of his life, all at our expense.

His other challenger is Daniel Johnson, a white supremacist known for gallavanting around the country, jumping onto local elections. Johnson proposes a Constitutional amendment to deport all non-white residents of the United States. Where they will all go, is a mystery, of course. It’s worth noting that Johnson is famous for fundraising for and having the support of Ron Paul at one point. Paul, no stranger to providing aid and comfort to bigots, later withdrew support, presumably because the political costs of supporting Johnson outweighed the potential benefits.

The Democratic candidate is a soft spoken Indian-born medical doctor. Taj is, for all practical purposes, a total long shot. If elected, he will only be the third Muslim to serve in the Congress. he will have been elected as a naturalized citizen in a predominately conservative district. He’s not a powerful public speaker but he listens well and cares deeply about the ideas of people in his community. Taj’s platform is fairly boilerplate Democratic. He supports the solid separation of church and state, supports expanded access to quality health care for all, supports public education, and supports the right of women to determine what happens to their bodies. Taj is a great candidate and would be a great alternative to the toxic set of representatives we currently have. Taj offers real solutions and thoughtfully addresses real issues.

My friend Mark first introduced me to this particular race, which is turning into one of the most interesting so far.

To help Taj, Mark and I decided to write a campaign song to entice voters to choose him in the general election. Originally, we had asked our friend Andy to come on board. He couldn’t do it so we brought our friend Dave Sharp on at the last minute. Below is the fruit of our 10 minute labor.

People have called the song “nice” (presumably so as to not hurt our feelings) and “terrible” (obviously indifferent to the fragile egos of old men). As reception has been mixed, I issue a challenge:

WRITE YOUR OWN SONG FOR TAJ. WE NEED TO GET TAJ ELECTED TO AS CONGRESSMAN FOR THE 11TH IN MICHIGAN.

That’s it. Write your own song for Taj, record it, and post it here. If you think our song blows, we want to see you do better. Because you can.