Tim Blair

I'd wager this Taupin/John's attempt at a sarcastic response to Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee."

Irony: other than "the Negro blues" line (Haggard and other country singers are more authentically bluesmen than any British art school poofter), it works as an earnest political statement.

There is no reason why any Elton John song should be released much less re-released.

Let's not encourage the man. I remember reading somewhere that Hugh "No Clue" Grant went halves with an unknown bidder at a recent celeb auction to buy a dinner with Elton and cronies for about $1 million. He'll even sing a ditty or two! For $1 mil. the prick should serve the food himself and then clean the dishes too. The arrogance to believe his company is worth so much is appalling.

Get a cover released by the "Dixie Chicks".
We haven't had a good ol' fashioned lynchin' round these here parts fer a while.

Then there's Randy Newman, but I don't know influenced whom:

We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down

Now your northern nigger's a negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the north has set the nigger free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In harlem in new york city
And he's free to be put in a cage in the south-side of chicago
And the west-side
And he's free to be put in a cage in hough in cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in east st. louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in fillmore in san francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in roxbury in boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down

(selection)

isn't he due to re-dedicate 'candle in the wind' again soon to someone else?

It's not really very impressive to write or record an anti-racist song in the 1970s or 1980s. Far more impressive to do it in the 1950s. You know, when there was actual segregation and lynchings going on.