Yikes. This isn’t a YouTube video. It’s an enhanced interrogation technique.
Paul McCartney and Barack Obama have a lot in common. When I was a tyke in sixties-era San Francisco, the Beatles were only spoken of in hushed tones, with all the deference due those musical and philosophical messiahs clearly sent from heaven to deliver us from the tone-deaf talent vacuum of the thirties, forties, and fifties.
Then one day I saw 17-year-old Judy Garland sing Over the Rainbow on the Wizard of Oz. Next it was Fred Astaire crooning Cheek to Cheek while twirling Ginger Rogers across our 13-inch black-and-white TV. Then Louis Armstrong, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Nat King Cole, Glen Miller, The Mousketeers, and my high school’s Small Ensemble singing group.
And I realized everything I had been taught about the Beatles was true. None of those musical hacks could ever hope to create something as profound as I Wanna Hold Your Hand or even approach brilliance of a song that repeats the line, “Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah, Hey Jude,” for 46 hours.
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To be honest, I worshipped at the Beatle Shrine as a youth, and seeing the President with Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and others doin the na-na from Hey Jude was endearing, to me.
However, like the empty headed super model, all was surface and emotion. Paul’s admonition to the press, “Lay off this Guy, He’s OK”, was of course a the shallow babblings of a court jester.
Millions of babies are legally slaughtered every year, the middle-east conflict could easily change to a WWIII nuclear conflict tomorrow and our national foundation (morally and economically) is being jack hammered away, all by the likes of the musical and political hero’s in that lovely, memory filled room.
Here’s to feelin groovy as the world rips at the seams.
I guess I was always a rebel from the rebels in a sense. Even when I was nine years old I thought that the interminable Hey Jude ending was ridiculous. But I know I’m treading on the nostalgia of many by knocking the Beatles. I can’t help it! The ratio of adulation they have gotten over the years in relation to their actual talent has always annoyed me. But I realize I am virtually alone in this view. Paul McCartney’s comment is just the same old drum beat, I’ve come to expect it. I think at some point with all Obama’s petulant attitude it will dawn on some people that Bush really was a classy guy in the way he would just let truly vicious criticism roll off his back.