Friday, November 30, 2012

la plus ca change

I found myself singing the first lines this morning, as I listened to reports of rioting in Cairo over the proposed new constitution.  Eerie how appropriate it is over 50 years later.
The Merry Minuet
They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
the Whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like Anybody very much.

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow Man

-- Sheldon Harnick (1958) in his pre-Fiddler on the Roof days -- and not Tom Lehrer