I remember reading a particular issue of Mad Magazine back in the seventies. As it so often did, it included some song and poem parodies, this time on an environmentalist theme. I can recite two of them from memory–one a spot-on Dr. Seuss, and the other a version of the song “America The Beautiful”:
O cancerous, for smoggy skies
For pesticidal grain
Irritated mountains rise
Above an asphalt plainAmerica, America
Thy sins prepare thy doom
Monoxide clouds shall be thy shrouds
Thy cities be thy tomb!
It’s such a simple ABAB structure, a well-known tune, and packed with patriotic associations. I thought I’d set my commenters on the task of updating it.
I’ll start:
O beautiful for armored trucks
For strong police brigades
For officers who give no fucks
Dispensing gas grenadesAmerica! America!
Where God preserves our rights
Where all can see that speech is free
I mean, of course, for whites
It occurs to me (and this has happened with a few of my earlier satires) that there will be some who read that last bit and smile approvingly. Those people frighten and disgust me.
OOPS.
I meant this…
I grew up on Mad parodies and can still remember many.
I think you may have cross-wired it with one of Carlin’s bits, though. I remember a very similar bit on one of his albums. Or maybe he adapted the Mad one.
O beautiful, for wire-tapped phones
and intercepted mail
while corp’rate sins the Fed condones
and banks too big to fail
America, America
in God you shouldn’t trust
courts idolize the Wall Street guys
–the world sighs with disgust
Oh beautiful white Ferguson
You fled from city blacks
Until the they started coming here
Then you again made tracks.
The population dipped for whites
Who stayed. Dramatically.
And now you feel discomfort
Being in minority.
The mayor and the local cops
Remained most Lilly white.
And thus you felt more snug and smug.
By God! That was all right!.
Tear gas and smoke bomb fireworks now
Are lighting up the sky.
A young man with a future, gone.
Who wasn’t meant to die.
Oh clueless little Ferguson,
A microcosm’s here.
The face of justice warped again?
Suspicion turned to fear.
And fear breeds hate. How long the wait?
Black justice same as white?
Now armored cars have joined the fray.
Another endless night.
I don’t know a lot about the US, so I adapted this to an Australian milieu:
Australia, Australia,
Tony Abbott’s paradise.
He’ll help the rich without a glitch,
No need to ask him twice.
His gov’ment said, “We are so broke
Our budget woes are sore.”
So they declared the cost be shared,
But mainly by the poor.
Australia, Australia,
ASIO* wants more powers
To spy on us in house or bus,
They’ll watch us in our showers.
In pursuit of terrorists
They view emails and stuff
Muslims too are much in view
But that’s just not enough.
Australia, Australia:
Abbott declares, “Old chap,
Please burn your coal, and sell your soul
Cos global warming’s crap.”
“My business adviser here**
On whom I place reliance
Boldly scoffs at all the profs,
Although he knows no science. ”
Australia, we are so proud
Of the Great Barrier Reef.
A wondrous mass with sharks and wrasse,
Of nature’s crowns the chief.
So let us launch new smokestacks near
Without a hint of grief,
As pollutants run beneath the sun
To contaminate the Reef.
Australia, Australia
We’ll lend a helping hand
Unless you’re black or dosh you lack,
Those ones we cannot stand.
So if you come by boat to here
We make a hell on earth
And those unpaid who try to aid
Are a target for our mirth.
Australia, Australia
We gave you Murdoch and Ken Ham,
For news to fake, an Ark to make.
Aren’t you impressed? I am!
Australia is number one
In male obesity,
We beat the Yanks and got no thanks
As we waddled off in glee.
*Our domestic intelligence agency.
**Maurice Newman, head of the Business Advisory Council; as a scientist he is a great businessman.
Zack, I should do a separate blog post with Waltzing Mathilda (which, for me, is a song I learned as a child at camp, and know fondly and by heart, and probably incorrectly)!
You astonish me!
Some of the words would be unfamiliar, I would guess. Squatter, billabong, jumbuck et al.
It’s Matilda without the h, by the way,
I must look if there are already parodies – must be, but I haven’t seen any.
Trust Australia to have a popular traditional song about a suicide!
I saw quite recently a parody of America America sung on Youtube by a young lady with a guitar.
Did I get it from FTB? (can’t remember things these days). Anyway, one of her lines was
America is number one
In teenage pregnancy.
That (obviously) inspired the last verse above.
Honestly, Zack, the song totally creeped me out as a young cuttlefish. “And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong”…. for us, it was a camping song (so we got to learn all about “waited while his billy boiled”, and “shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag” and all that), but I still get a chill when I remember “you’ll never catch me alive said he”. That song was a big part of my childhood!
Just recently saw the movie “On The Beach”, and the treatment of Waltzing Matilda (no H) was just horrific. It went on forever, a drunken chant, without any care as to what words were being sung. Blah.
… Also, I have to tip my hat to Tom Waits and Tom Traubert’s Blues:
Now, THAT really is a parody!
Well, I could understand some of the words, I suppose.
Maybe I will warm to that man, but the general delivery doesn’t make it easy.
Now, now, Zack… you don’t want your nation represented by Rolf Harris, now, do you?
No, indeed not.
I never liked Harris (easy to say now, but true).
Still, it’s horrifying how much he got away with for so long.
A one-man Catholic church, but for sheer longevity the church still has him beat.
On W Matilda, I have found a parody or two, not side-splitting but OK. The first one is a rap version. I agree the song has its creepy side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGl543e9kwM
http://www.bushfirepress.com/promotions/singing/aussie_songs/
Back to America, here’s my contribution:
O treacherous with drone-filled skies,
Dead bodies piled up deep
On foreign shores where our supplies
Of bombs make mothers weep.
America, America,
Blood shed its curse on thee.
And drowned thy worth in scorched earth
Till we’re no longer free.
I don’t know if it counts as a parody, but I can’t think of Waltzing Matilda without thinking of this:
http://www.pogues.com/Releases/Lyrics/LPs/RumSodomy/Waltzing.html