Happy New Year and happy satire. Sure, that’s an expression. One of the great, energetic musical comedians, Tom Lehrer is a must-listen (again, another real expression) for those bent on listening to comedy made by intelligent people.
Until recently, Lehrer was a university professor who got out of the satire business for a number of reasons. He has been quoted as saying “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize.” That about sums it up. Give it a listen.
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Host: Jason Klamm
Producer: Mike Worden
This Week’s Guests: Dan Gomiller and Ari Jarvis
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Gotta say I was a little surprised no one touched on Leher’s radical politics.
This also enters into the record when folks have asked Leher about going public again with his act. During the Bush II years, he said that one of the reasons he doesn’t write new political material is that he found the new crop of mandarins to be beyond the pale: On this side of that pale, you could write satire and entertain the conceit that you’ll have your moral impact on the culture. He couldn’t begin to conceive of a tune/lyric that could even begin to countenance the gross immorality of the neocon ethos. When he wrote this stuff in the ’60s, there were lots of middle Americans who questioned Vietnam and global military power projection, in general. An interesting counterpoint is to consider the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice”. It wasn’t satiric, and burned with a scalding anger against war crime, committed by a league of American old faces, joined by a new crop of young buck mandarins with blood in their eyes.
This is all more-than hinted at by “Werner Von Braun”, which is a very dark comment on Project Paperclip, where American and Soviet power elites vied for opportunities to scoop up the best Nazi German scientists: We got Von Braun.
Add “MLF Lullaby” and “Send the Marines”, and it’s incontrovertable.