Parody As a Weapon Part XLIV

Has the Biden Administration moved beyond parody?

Previously, in Part XLIII, the inability of Joe Biden to accept responsibility for the outcomes of his policies was explored through the prism of the song catalogue of Chuck Berry, a man who seemingly never could avoid being held accountable.

The challenge present in finding new ways to mock Biden, his administration and his ilk is that so many of their actions appear to be a self-parody.

One such example is Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot bemoaning the toxicity and lack of civility in our civic and political discourse less than a week after she greeted the end of the US Supreme Court’s latest term with a public exhortation of “F*ck Clarence Thomas”. Another case in point is the backed-up voicemail message in Joe Biden’s voice left on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop where he advises that it looks as the crack-addicted son is in the “clear” regarding press coverage of his overseas influence peddling. This of course contradicted Biden’s claims during the presidential campaign that he never discussed his son’s foreign business entanglements.

Of course, it would be difficult to drain the pool of available similar demonstrations of the rampant hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness that characterizes the Biden administration and their base of support. Seemingly, as soon as an imaginative communicator comes up with an absurd position on domestic or foreign policy to mock this crowd, said position is adopted and promoted in democrat talking points. This can be quite tiresome for one interested in parodying the clown car, as it is forever being sent in with an exhaustible supply of floppy-shoed, red-nose-wearing harlequins piling out of its doors.

When confronted with such a challenge, one approach is to examine what the top performers in a given field have done to rise to the top of their crafts. In song parody, there has never been a better example in the conservative world than Paul Shanklin, who not only had the gift for parody lyrics, but would produce and perform the tunes as well.

The most commercially successful song parodist is Weird Al Yankovic. Generally not political, after being given air time in the late 1970s on the Doctor Demento Radio Show that he faithfully followed, for nearly five decades the former architecture student has offered his own re-takes on popular music, spoofing the songs themselves or other takes on modern life (or less than modern life, in the case of “Amish Paradise”).

Both Weird Al and Doctor Demento would like concede that the greatest song parodist and satirist was Tom Lehrer, also known as The Professor. A Harvard-trained mathematician and academician, Doctor Lehrer brought his own iconoclastic intellectual snobbery to the masses beginning with his vinyl records in the 1950s. He gained TV exposure in the 1960s and 1970s with appearances on shows such as “That Was The Week That Was” and David Frost, syndicated radio exposure in the 1970s and 1980s, and had some of his classic compositions made into a Broadway musical called “Tomfoolery.”

While an unapologetically liberal Ivy Leaguer, Lehrer spoofed the left, right and middle as well as the upper, middle and lower classes. While often embracing politically correct positions, he slapped political correctness along with everything else. His wit was quick and incisive, and in addition to borrowing the tunes of others to do his parodies, The Professor also composed his own original music on many of his satirical pieces.

As a veteran of the US Army during the Cold War who was drafted as an enlisted soldier in the National Security Agency and nuclear programs, Lehrer was concerned that a Third World War might not give the American entertainment industry enough warning to compose a body of music to rally the public in support, such as had been done by George M. Cohan in 1917 and Hollywood generally in 1942. As such, he prepared his contribution in advance, in the manner of Cohan (as portrayed on the eve of the Second World War by James Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”).

World War III as envisioned by Lehrer and others has yet to materialize, though the weakness of the Biden administration does at times seem to invite it. Nonetheless, Biden’s war on the fossil fuel industry has wrought a nuclear-winter-like impact on the American economy. As such, I have reworked the Professor’s tune into the ditty that could have been performed by the current occupant of the White House as he bade his farewell to his predecessor, and begun his term and signed the executive orders on day one that have brought us to our current circumstances.

 

 

So long, Don,

Prosperity is gone,

Ordered away by me.

But while high gas prices

Bring on the next crisis

You can see me

On your TV.

As our land goes down the crapper

Watch Don Lemon and Jake Tapper

Switch On and Off just like The Clapper

As all stock market gains are lost.

No need for you to miss a minute of the economic holocaust.

Little Joey B, he occupied the White House,

A not very bright louse was he.

He was mighty proud when Green New Deal orders were signed.

Didn’t lead from behind, no siree!

And this was his intention

As he bragged of his invention:

So long, Don,

Prosperity is gone,

Ordered away by me.

Witness my elation,

At all this inflation

Although I pretend

I hope it will end.

Recall the Trump years,

And all the Left’s tears,

But now your worse fears

Are coming true somehow.

You’ll all be poor ‘fore my term is over,

Unless I get removed somehow!

If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN

Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: AFNN_USA