Re: USAGE: "privilege" as "permission"

On 11/24/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
" ...
'Go ahead and take your advantage
Go ahead, I give you privilege
Don't worry, don't have no sympathy
This is between you and me'
...Anyone know anything about the song or the idoms?   ...  there's a
line in an 1851 novel where "privilege" is clearly a drop-in
replacement for "permission": "I give you privilege to open it".  And
there's a modern use - a quotation in an article about an art exhibit,
in which a photographer says "I'm an insider, so I give you privilege
to that world".  Different meaning, but still an odd idiom.  The
photographer's name is Heinrich, but I got the impression she's
American, not German. ... "
Mark J. Reed

As for 'I give you privilege':
"privilege (canon law)
Privilege in Canon law is the legal concept whereby someone is exempt
from the ordinary operation of the law for some specific purpose.

Papal privileges resembled dispensations, since both involved
exceptions to the ordinary operations of the law. But whereas
"dispensations exempt[ed] some person or group from legal obligations
binding on the rest of the population or class to which they belong,"
(James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law 161 (Longman 1995); Decretum
Gratiani, D 3 c. 3) "[p]rivileges bestowed a positive favour not
generally enjoyed by most people." "Thus licences to teach or to
practise law or medicine, for example,"(Brundage at 60) were "legal
privileges, since they confer[red] upon recipients the right to
perform certain functions for pay, which the rest of the population
[was] not [permitted to exercise.]" (James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon
Law 161 (Longman 1995) at 160-161) Yet, such licenses might also
involve what should properly be termed dispensation, if they waived
Canon law requirement that an individual hold a particular
qualification to practice law or medicine, as, for example, a degree."
Stella is certainly legally competent to 'bestow' this 'positive favour'.
And the definition of the term is
"priv·i·lege (prĭv'ə-lĭj, prĭv'lĭj) pronunciation
n.
1.
         1. A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or
benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste. See
synonyms at right.
         2. Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a
prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or
detriment of others.
2. The principle of granting and maintaining a special right or
immunity: a society based on privilege.
3. Law. The right to privileged communication in a confidential
relationship, as between client and attorney, patient and physician,
or communicant and priest.
4. An option to buy or sell a stock, including put, call, spread, and straddle.
tr.v., -leged, -leg·ing, -leg·es.
1. To grant a privilege to.
2. To free or exempt.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin prīvilēgium, a law
affecting one person : prīvus, single, alone + lēx, lēg-, law.]"

As for 'don't have no sympathy', this is simply idiomatic double
negative. an emphatic form of speech common from Old Saxon through the
middle of the 19th century. Grammarians after that time have made it
seem to sound uneducated by trying to make speech logical. Unlike
conlangs, natlangs have a life of their own and are not bound by
rules.
Note the last line of the chorus,
'We will see who is taking advantage of who',
which the grammarians, who are bound by rules (see 'hoist by his own
petard'), would say should be 'who is ,,, of who(m)'.
Either the song is old,  and in a common idiom, or made to show the
speakers as ordinary, unstuffy (see 'grammarian') and real folk.
Ο Θεός σας ευλογεί πάντα, όλοι οι τρόποι,
Paul