Persuaders -- "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" (1971)

Here I am laying in the hospital

Bandaged from feet to head 

I'm in the state of shock

Just that much from being dead

I didn't think my woman

Could do something like this to me

Think again, pardner -- think again.

You best believe they can absolutely do something like that to you.  And they will if you make one false move . . . take one false step.

Initially, things were going so well for the singer of this song:

It's five o'clock in the morning

And I'm just getting in

Hmmm . . . I wonder what kept him from getting home before five o'clock in the morning.  (Maybe traffic was really bad?)

I knock on the door

A voice sweet and low says, "Who is it?"

She opens up the door and lets me in

Never once do she say, "Where have you been?"

I've seen some things that are too good to be true, but this is definitely the too-good-to-be-truest thing ever.

She says, "Are you hungry? 

Are you hungry, honey? Did you eat yet?"

(By the way, the Persuaders sing "hungry" as "hongry."  These guys are the real deal.)

"Are you hongry?"

As a matter of fact, honey, I am feeling a little peckish.  Drinking, dancing, and rolling in the hay with strange trim definitely gives a man an appetite.

All the time she's smiling, never once raises her voice 

It's five o'clock in the morning

And I don't give it a second thought

But the next thing he knows, he's is the hospital -- bandaged from head to toe and lucky to be alive.  And shocked . . . yes, shocked . . . that his woman "could do something like this to me."

Guys are pretty stupid generally, but this guy is a f*cking moron.  He gets home at five o'clock in the morning and thinks it's no big deal because his wife doesn't scream at him, but rather speaks in a voice "sweet and low," asking him if he's hungry -- how about some scrambled eggs and bacon, honeybabysugarpie?

So he "doesn't give it a second thought."  He gets home at five o'clock in the morning and he thinks he's actually going to get away with all that crap he's been doing all night. 

Wrong, moron!  As soon as you turn your back, she is going after your you-know-whats with the hedge trimmers!

Radio Raheem, a character in
Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing

As our featured song says, it is a thin line between love and hate.  And as the writer, professor, political activist, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said in 1986 -- the year he won the Nobel Peace Prize -- "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."  True dat, boys and girls.  

The woman in the song is far from being indifferent about her man strolling in at five o'clock in the morning.  Indifference doesn't put people in the hospital "just that much from being dead."

It's also a thin line between being a smartass (which is fine -- at least I think it is) and being an assh*le (which is bad).  2 or 3 lines walks right up to that line on a regular basis, and might even have stepped over it once or twice.

Let's take a vote.  How many times do you think 2 or 3 lines has stepped over the line between being a smartass and being an assh*le?

A.  Once.

B.  Twice.

C.  Not sure exactly, but a lot more than just once or twice.

D.  Not sure exactly, but a lot more than C.

E.  Only once, but when he stepped over the line he never stepped back.

I don't know why I'm bothering to ask my readers to vote.  You don't click on my ads when I beg you to -- oh, a few of you do (and I know who you are), but most of you ignore my ads -- so why are you going to stir themselves from your sloth-like lassitude to express an opinion on this question?

The Persuaders were a New York City R&B vocal group that formed in 1969.  Their biggest, "Thin Line Between Love and Hate," reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1971.  It's been covered by a lot of people.

Here's the Pretenders' cover of the song:

Here's the original Persuaders' recording:

Here they are performing the song on Soul Train:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: