Bubble-Gum Government

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Bubble-Gum Government

George: “Did I ever tell you dudes that I was once in a band?”
Ben: “You rock, dude!”
Tom: “Dude, what did you riff?”
George: “Dude! We were, like, y’know, a fusion of neo-Caribbean folk-punk, indigenous African mountain vegetarian-dysharmonic, and, like, y’know, Tibetan urban squalor existentialist nihilism.”
Ben and Tom: “Dude! You’re so, like, ready to be, totally, commander-in-chief of the army of the rockin’ new republic!”

- A conversation not attributed to George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Republican candidate for president, was pettily faulted by some, oh, artist, for playing one of his screeds in her campaign. Anyone who follows politics even casually will recall the lengthy catalogue of Republican candidates who have been forbidden to spin some rockin’ platters of bubblegum music despite having paid off ASCAP or BMI in order to do so.

The rational Republican faults Congresswoman Bachmann for bringing cheap music to an occasion of rational discourse. But she’s not the first politician to patronize the American people; Senator Bob Dole’s long-ago campaign riff, “I’m a Dole Man,” is still cringe-making.

At what point in history did soft-rock mucous – um, music – become obligatory in any political campaign beyond running for parliamentarian of the junior high school student council?

Consider Abraham Lincoln hiring a garbage – um, garage – band to sing “California Dreamin’” as an intro at Gettysburg.

Imagine Winston Churchill, in Britain’s darkest hour, prefacing his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech with a recording of “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, heyuh, baby, why don’cha be my gurllll!”

Perhaps President Reagan should have bracketed his memorial to the Challenger astronauts by twanging out a few chords from “Hang on, Sloopy.”

Think of the combined houses of Congress waving their hands in unison and singin’ along to “Heartbreak Hotel” in response to President Churchill’s “Infamy” speech.

No. Let’s not do any of that.

Democracy is not grounded on a soundtrack; democracy is grounded on a collection of documents which promote the dignity of man based on reasoning from natural law and from divine revelation.

But is music important? Of course it is, along with literature and the visual arts. However, someone standing for political office does not drag along a swiped Shoney’s Big Boy statue to show he’s one of The People sculpturally.

And music has long been employed in political campaigns, John Philip Sousa, for instance, and a bit of Aaron Copeland. These fellows ain’t Mahler or Wagner, but they celebrate an outward and exuberent America in a way that the whiny, introspective me, me, me-ness of adolescent roller-skatin’ noise never can. The reality is that contemporary campaign music is to music what rest-room graffiti is to Cezanne and Matisse.

If politicians must have campaign music then let them bring on something a little more grown-up than Peaches and Herb.

Beyond the election campaigns, this country also needs to consider an appropriate sound-track for bombing the he** out of countries with whom we’re not at war. I suggest “There’s a Kind of Hush all over the World” by Herman’s Hermits.

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