How long are the Fifties going to last? I like skinny ties and full skirts, dry martinis – the whole Mad Men shtick. (Except smoking – I’m glad that’s gone.) It’s the conservative politics that bore me, the whole conservative moment that we’ve been living through. It’s been way more than a moment and has overstayed its welcome.
I realize that we never, truly repeat anything. That we only copy styles and - even then – interpret them. That watching Mad Men on a twelve-inch B&W Philco wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as watching it on a sixty-inch color flat screen TV. Yet, some styles are more consequential than others and changing them makes some kind of progress a bit more likely. Styles in politics, for instance. It’s time for outspoken liberals to be outspoken again. For political extremists to return to the margins (from memory in the case of the Left) and to admit that replacing William F. Buckley jr. with morons was never a good idea. It may not produce anything of real political consequence (what does?) but it will introduce the last several generations to the idea that politics is more than a lame enterprise devoted to fear and greed. That Republicans are about more than mugging the middle class (if that’s true) and that Democrats are motivated by something a touch more elevated than appeasement (if that’s possible.)
I don’t propose a return to the political styles of the late Sixties and early Seventies. That would be nice, but “Occupy” has bungled that so completely, discredited the idea so thoroughly that no one can touch it for a while. Nor do I advocate a return to the cultural styles of that period. Not, at least, without irony. I suggest that we nudge the cultural calendar forward. Not a great lurching movement, but a small, logical step from the grey flannel Fifties to the madras plaid of the early Sixties. It’s time for a folk song revival.
The Weavers are too early and Bob Dylan is too late. The Kingston Trio is just right. Three wholesome young men giving earnest renditions of wonderful songs. Don’t worry, we’ll get to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Judy Collins. (They may well get there before us.) Admit it, we’re heading there anyway. Think of all the mandolins, banjos and ukuleles you’ve heard lately. Mumford and Sons are just one “Wimoweh” away from folk music.
I humbly submit my own attempt at folk music below. Like all good folk songs, it concerns death and disaster. In this case, the crippled cruise ship that drifted for days in the Gulf of Mexico recently. I based it on a traditional tune called either “Titanic” or “It Was Sad When The Great Ship Went Down.” Let’s get this hootenanny started!
CAPTAIN’S LOG.
Three thousand boarded Triumph
To sail the Gulf of Mex.
When the ship ground to a halt
The passengers were vexed.
The toilets didn’t flush,
Food in freezers turned to mush.
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down.
It smelled bad, it smelled bad,
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down
To a dead stop.
Good wives and nags,
Little children shit in bags.
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down.
Three days out of Galveston
And not that far from shore,
The rich refused to let the poor up
Where the air was pure.
So they kept them below deck
Where they almost drowned in dreck.
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down.
It smelled bad, it smelled bad,
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down
To a dead stop.
Good wives and nags,
Little children shit in bags.
It smelled bad when the cruise ship slowed down.
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