There IS a different way of looking at this sort of song. Earlier I referred to Randy Newman's "Sail Away"
This song uses the same narrative device as Knopfler uses in "Money For Nothing". Indeed Newman used that device before Knopfler had even recorded a note, and has used it many times. It's all over the album by the same name as the song, and in fact a person could listen to that album and get very offended (without having to put up with steams of profanity).
However one critic saw Newman and his method like this...
Of all the songwriters I’ve spoken to, there isn’t one who is at once as serious and hilarious as Randy Newman. It’s the same mix he brings to his songs, fusing humour and darkness to reveal the often harsh realities of human existence. And he does so in the first-person, speaking from the source itself … And it is this trait, removing all distance from his subject by becoming that subject, that separates his work from that of his peers. There is no other songwriter who has shown us bigotry, ignorance, and human weakness as convincingly as Randy Newman. And he has done so in our own words.
That's Paul Zollo in his excellent book "Songwriters on Songwriting."
I'd dispute Zollo's claim that "it is this trait, removing all distance from his subject by becoming that subject, that separates his work from that of his peers" because other songwriters had used it, certainly by the time Zollo wrote the above. However Newman makes unerring, hard hitting use of the device he calls "the untrustworthy narrator", and, I think, uses it more extremely than most.
However I still think it's a dangerous game to play. Some people out there really might think that Newman is a good ole boy, or approving of that way of life and thinking, or that he hates short people. Some people just will not get the joke, realise that the parody actually is a parody. Maybe that's not the songwriter's problem though.
