When I was a kid the only folk singer person I knew (till I met Bill Bonyun) was a friend of my parents, Harrison Taylor. She had no pretensions to being a hotshot folksinger...that concept had really not arisen in those days. As I was growing up, getting loud on the banjo, Harrison tended to circle her wagons and so I didn't learn as much from this gentle, undemonstrative singer as I might have. But her repertoire was mostly Burl Ives...nothing much original, a few New Yorkish items of the time like Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" and the "Martins and the Coys" made famous by Dorothy Shay the Park Avenue Hillbillie.

That, however, did not mean her songs were not deeply felt. And she taught me something about genuineness. Once I sang a gospel song I had just learned. Didn't mean anything particular by it, I was then and am now unreligious. But Harrison, though she complimented me for my parents' sake, said she would never sing that song. Why? "Because I don't believe in it."

All of which is background for saying: in those days I had no problem singing a song I didn't believe in. Now, when I choose very carefully before doing anything gospelish because I don't want to add fuel to the inflammatory (per)version of Christianity that's getting around these days, I recall Harrison. And I find I steer clear of a lot of gospel because it puts me off now, as it never used to. I regret this, and feel the loss. Such gospel as I like is usually black-originated now, not white, whatever that means.

I also agree with the poster above who cited national anthems. About ours... Well, let's just say I'm an avid baseball fan (how about them Sox) but when they play the anthem to Old Gory, I turn the sound off and don't really want to look at the screen. I feel I am a patriot, but they've stolen my flag and are trying to steal my country and right now the flag offends me, which I'm very sorry for.

All of which adds up to: songs of religion and politics, in these times, tend to offend me.

Apart from that, I'm offended by next to nothing except outright cruelty and macho meanness (if that makes me a girly man so be it). So I don't like "Ballad of the Green Berets" / "Give Me Some Men Who Are Stout Hearted Men" type stuff. And I do agree about the patently phony...like "Scarlet Ribbons" (perfect example) though I like equally mawkish stuff such as "I Cannot Call Her Mother."
Bob