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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!zehntel!raymond
From: raymond@zehntel.UUCP (Doug Raymond)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Shoddy Gag Story
Message-ID: <1931@zehntel.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 11:54:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: zehntel.1931
Posted: Thu Oct 17 11:54:12 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Oct-85 07:24:40 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Zehntel Automation Systems Inc, Walnut Creek CA
Lines: 39

***

Isn't it amazing how the most insignificant historical events
can be immortalized in song?  One song which all us Americans
are taught in third grade will serve as an example.  We learn this
patriotic song at an early age when our cognitive skills are still
quite limited by shortness of attention span and our vocabularies
are still quite minimal, so somehow we get all the sounds memorized
without actually reflecting that the song commemorates some rather
disconnected and trivial aspects of our Nation's history.  Upon
adult analysis, (well, anyhow, on hearing our KIDS sing it ...)
we find this song describes:

1) the great wisdom of our CIA operatives
2) how furious the Indians were when defeated by General "Mad" Anthony
3) how hippies were led into the mountains by colorfully-clad gurus
4) how streams flowing through golf courses lost their crystalline purity
5) an obscure supreme court decision wherein an industrial accident involving
   the grinding up of a pair of homosexuals was ruled "force majeure"
6) a '50s punk rock movement whose participants wore jeweled headgear and
   listened to Chuck Berry records
7) the founding of a school for deaf girls.

In case you haven't guessed it by, now, the lyrics follow:

O Beautiful for sagacious spies
For anger'd Braves of Wayne

For purple mages' mountains, tees
Above the polluted Frane

America America God shred his gays on thee
And crown thy hood with Brother Goode

From she to signing she

Doug Raymond