{"id":7041,"date":"2016-01-21T03:20:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T08:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/?p=7041"},"modified":"2016-01-25T09:49:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T14:49:40","slug":"america-the-famous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/?p=7041","title":{"rendered":"America the Famous"},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up at 2:58 am this morning with the lyrics of this old song running through my head. It’s by Harry Chapin from his Album, Verities and Balderdash<\/strong>, \"Verities<\/a>which came out in about 1974. I know this is long, so those of you with ADD are just going to have to bear with me.<\/p>\n

What Made America Famous<\/p>\n

It was the town that made America famous
\nThe churches full and the kids all gone to hell
\nSix traffic lights and seven cops and all the streets kept clean
\nThe supermarket and the drug store and the bars all doing well<\/p>\n

Now they were the folks that made America famous
\nOur local fire department stocked with short haired volunteers
\nAnd on Saturday night while America boozes the fire
\nDepartment showed dirty movies, the lawyer and the grocer
\nSeeing their dreams come to life on the movie screens
\nWhile the plumber hopes that he won’t be seen
\nAs he tries to hide his fears and he wipes away his tears<\/p>\n

But somethings burning somewhere
\nDoes anybody care?<\/p>\n

We were the kids that made America famous
\nThe kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair
\nWe were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and coppin’ out
\nConvinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care<\/p>\n

We lived in the house that made America famous
\nIt was a rundown slum, the shame of all our decent
\nFolks in town, we hippies and some welfare cases
\nCrowded families of coal black faces, cramped inside
\nSome cracked old boards, the best that we all could afford
\nBut still too nice for the rich landlord to ever tear it down<\/p>\n

And we could hear the sound of something burning somewhere
\nIs anybody there?<\/p>\n

We all lived the life that made America famous
\nOur cops would make a point to shadow us around our town
\nAnd we love children put a Swastika on the bright red firehouse door
\nAmerica, the beautiful, it makes a body proud<\/p>\n

And then came the night that made America famous
\nWas it carelessness or someone’s sick idea of a joke
\nIn the tinder box trap that we hippies lived in
\nSomeone struck a spark at first I thought that I was dreaming
\nThen I saw the first flames gleaming and heard
\nThe sound of children screamin’ comin’ through the smoke<\/p>\n

And something’s burning somewhere
\nDoes anybody care?<\/p>\n

Oh, it was the fire that made America famous, the sirens wailed
\nAnd the firemen stumbled sleepy from their homes and the
\nPlumber yelled, Come on let’s go, but they saw what was burning
\nAnd said, Take it slow, let ’em sweat a little, they’ll never know
\nAnd besides, we just cleaned the chrome, said the plumber
\nThen I’m goin’ alone<\/p>\n

Well he rolled on up in the fire truck and raised the
\nLadder to the ledge where me and my girl and a couple of kids
\nWere clinging like bats to the edge, we staggered to salvation and
\nCollapsed on the street and I never thought that a fat man’s face
\nWould ever look so sweet<\/p>\n

I shook his hand in the scene that made America famous
\nAnd a smile from the heart that made America great
\nWe spent the rest of that night in the home of this man
\nWe’d never known before; it’s funny when you get that close
\nIt’s kinda hard to hate<\/p>\n

I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous
\nI had the kind of a dream that maybe they’re still
\nTrying to teach in school of the America that made America famous
\nAnd of the people who just might understand that how together<\/p>\n

Yes we can<\/strong> create a country better than the one
\nWe have made of this land, we have a choice to make
\nEach man who dares to dream reaching out his hand
\nA prophet or just a crazy, damn dreamer of a fool
\nYes a crazy fool<\/p>\n

And something’s burning somewhere
\nDoes anybody care? Is anybody there?
\nIs anybody there?<\/p>\n

Harry was famous for his song Cats in the Cradle<\/strong> which has been terribly abused over the years for its sickly sweet sentiment about spending time with your kids before they grow up and don’t have time for you. It was on the same album, but this was the song that spoke the most to me. I actually used it as part of a presentation to a group of kids about five years younger than me in a college English class in 1977. They knew virtually nothing about the Vietnam era and what it was like for young men to be subject to the draft. It reminds me of young people today, who have virtually no memory of anything that doesn’t come from the internet. They I started thinking about \"Trump<\/a>Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n

So here’s a portion of David Brooks’ column from The New York Times<\/strong> yesterday. He titled it Time for a Republican Conspiracy!<\/strong> Take your Adderall and keep that ADD at bay!
\n________________
\n The \"tea<\/a>Tea Party, Ted Cruz\u2019s natural vehicle, has 17 percent popular support, according to Gallup. The idea that most women, independents or mainstream order-craving suburbanites would back a guy who declares his admiration for Vladimir Putin is a mirage. The idea that the G.O.P. can march into the 21st century intentionally alienating every person of color is borderline insane.<\/p>\n

Worse is the prospect that one of them might somehow win. Very few presidents are so terrible that they genuinely endanger their own nation, but Trump and Cruz would go there and beyond.<\/strong> Trump is a solipsistic branding genius whose \u201cpolicies\u201d have no contact with Planet Earth and who would be incapable of organizing a coalition, domestic or foreign.<\/p>\n

Cruz would be as universally off-putting as he has been in all his workplaces.<\/strong> He\u2019s always been good at tearing things down but incompetent when it comes to putting things together.
\n_________________<\/p>\n

He goes on to recommend a grass roots uprising to support candidate C – any of the others that could be C, instead of the two truly dangerous A and B candidates. And he ends his column with a rather plaintive request of Republicans:<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t go quietly and pathetically into the night.
\n<\/strong>
\nI say: Don’t allow Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to “let us \"sweating\"<\/a>sweat a little” and get us to worrying about the polished chrome. I know – I previously wrote a piece that said there have been other presidents in the past worse than Donald Trump. And that is possibly true. And I’m sure firemen in Peshawar, Beijing and \"firefighters<\/a>Tehran have saved people from burning buildings. But those countries are already ruined beyond salvation. Let’s not let America be ruined too by electing either of these “gentlemen”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up at 2:58 am this morning with the lyrics of this old song running through my head. It’s by Harry Chapin from his Album, Verities and Balderdash, which came out in about 1974. I know this is long, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7041"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7052,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions\/7052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}