Recently I vacationed at a popular mountain resort town. One evening I visited a local lounge featuring a live act. On the performing schedule was a solo singer and guitarist, then a four-man pop/rock band.

Before he hit the stage, I befriended the singer who was opening up the show. He was a skinny, funny-looking guy; odd, but intelligent and kind. I sat up front next to his girlfriend and a middle-aged soldier.

The military man was quite friendly; he was looking forward to the music. The guitarist's song was a weird, comical first-person story about riding his bicycle. While he played it, he wore a big curly black wig and gag glasses with eyes painted in. The solider loved it and bought a CD from the girlfriend right after the first song. People laughed and applauded.

While the guitarist talked to the crowd, a man wearing clothes sold by a popular worldwide company approached the stage and, face-to-face, made an insulting inquiry about the lone performer's "manhood." It appeared that this man perceived the musician as weak and vulnerable because the song he played was goofy and he deserved to be mocked and humiliated.

The guitarist repeated the brand-name man's inquiry of the microphone and presented him to the crowd. He thanked the brand-name man for the warm welcome to Jasper and dedicated the next song to him, which was a scathingly sarcastic indictment of, coincidentally, exactly the behaviour exhibited by the brand-name man.

The song brutally humiliated the brand-name man, but only because he was behaving in the belligerent manner condemned by the song. The man was so disgraced that he stepped on stage beside the singer as he sang, contemplating how to salvage his pride. Immediately, though, two members of the rock band stepped on stage and escorted him down.

The owner of the establishment instructed the singer to stop playing after three or four songs, out fo concern about possible destructive behaviour by the brand-name man and his friends, despite the musician's apparent popularity with the rest of the crowd. The nice military man told us that the brand-name man was also in the military, ahead of him in rank.

Later that evening I mat another nice man from the military in a late-night fast-food restaurant. I asked him questions about the military and he asked me questions about the purple-haired, body-pierced boys his teenage daughter brings home. I advised him to get to know his daughter's freaky friends before grounding her. It was a pleasant and informative exchange.

If the singer and his girlfriend had judged the friendly military man and not talked to him, they would not have sold a CD or received his supportive pat on the back after playing. If the brand-name man had not judged the singer as weak and freaky after just one song, he would not have been savagely humiliated by the common sense songs subsequently played by the singer.