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At Least Nobody's Using "Blood and Soil" Yet

Julian Sanchez | 7.26.2004 3:21 AM

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Tim Noah at Slate notes the distasteful provenance of Kerry's "Let America be America again" slogan.

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Julian Sanchez is a contributing editor at Reason.

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  1. Gary Gunnels   21 years ago

    Why exactly is the provenance distasteful? BTW, is this Hit n’ Run poetry day or something? 🙂

  2. kmw   21 years ago

    Which is why you don’t see Politicians wholeheartedly endorsing Rage Against The Machine lyrics.

    They’d garner the 30% lefty vote, and that’s about it.

  3. Gary Gunnels   21 years ago

    Julian Sanchez,

    Well, if Noah’s intepretation is correct that would make the goal of course lamentable, but I still don’t see how the provenance is distasteful.

  4. Gary Gunnels   21 years ago

    Julian,

    “Blut und Boden” would have sounded more cool by the way. 🙂

  5. rst   21 years ago

    The poem has only one meaning: America’s golden promise is hooey. It’s hooey for blacks, it’s hooey for the farmer, it’s hooey for the Native Americans. It’s hooey for the entire proletariat.

    Oh please, Mr. Noah, take your 60 cents a word and get in line behind Susan Sarandon and all the other Priveleged Americans who can’t help but bitch about the system that made them priveleged.

  6. Da   21 years ago

    Why exactly is the provenance distasteful?

    Well, “anti-capitalist poetry written by a Stalinist” pretty much falls into the category of “diametrically opposed to American values”.

    Anyway, I’m less bothered by who the poet was than I am by the fact that the slogan “Let America be America again” again doesn’t actually have any discernable meaning.

  7. Steve   21 years ago

    um, rst, you need to read that paragraph again. Tim Noah isn’t saying that he thinks America’s promise is hooey. He’s saying that Langston Hughes thought America’s promise was hooey. (“The poem has only one meaning…”). It’s not that complicated.

  8. Mike   21 years ago

    54-40 or fight!

  9. Julian Sanchez   21 years ago

    rst-
    Go back and reread; Tim is urging Democrats to distance themselves from that sort of sentiment.

  10. Gary Gunnels   21 years ago

    Julian Sanchez,

    Well, clearly in the 1930s (when Langston Hughes was writing the poem) it was hooey for blacks. Now his solution was of course wrongheaded, but his observation that it was hooey for blacks was not.

  11. JM   21 years ago

    Kind of remnds me of the Reagan campaign starting to use Mellencamp’s “Little Pink Houses”. They, too, took no more than the catchy headline phrase “Ain’t that America” without listening to the context of the whole song.

  12. Mr. Nice Guy   21 years ago

    “Kind of remnds me of the Reagan campaign starting to use Mellencamp’s “Little Pink Houses”.”

    My favorite is people thinking “Born in the USA” is a straight patriotic ditty just because of the chorus. This, along with “Every Breath You Take” being mistaken for a love song. People seem either too stupid to understand irony or too lazy to listen to the lyrics of the entire piece. Pretty fucking irritating.

  13. joe   21 years ago

    Mr. Nice Guy,

    Then there are the couples who say “The One I Love” by REM is “their song.” Um, ok…

  14. Jason Ligon   21 years ago

    “Then there are the couples who say “The One I Love” by REM is “their song.” Um, ok…”

    This is what you get when you mumble all of the lyrics that have meaning like Stipe (sp?) or Springsteen so you can blast the chorus.

    “Dude, what did he say just now?”

    “I dunno, but he was Born in the USA, that’s for damn sure.”

    LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

  15. Mr. Nice Guy   21 years ago

    joe:

    Yeah, “The One I Love” is another great example. It all comes to a circle, though, since these idiots’ relationships are probably simple props to occupy their times.

    I have to admit a classic fuck up. I was a DJ for my college radio station, and a gorgeous 6 foot blonde walked in the studio wearing a pink dress. I quickly spun “Pretty in Pink” and dedicated it to her, and she got furious at the line “Isn’t she easy?”. The shoot-down was inevitable, but I gave her the ammo 🙂

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