Time to Sing Along...

Before the teabaggers, there was Woodstock Nation. (Remember?) And before you jump to the conclusion that aging has simply transformed the latter into the former, bear in mind that the slightly older median age for the teabagging crowd puts them squarely (and I do mean squarely) in what was then the “anybody over thirty” set we weren’t supposed to trust.

Patti Smith sang “People Have the Power” in ’88, but the best anthem of all, from 1969, was “We Can Be Together” by Jefferson Airplane:



The real difference between protest then and now is that Woodstock’s revolutionary spirit was defined by pure joy (as in “Yippie!”), while today’s teabagger movement is characterized by befuddled bitterness.

Do the teabaggers have an anthem? “Dazed and Confused” would certainly be appropriate, but I somehow can’t imagine it catching on. Much easier to picture them swaying with arms interlinked singing the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” (“The taxman’s taken all my dough...”). But I can’t help but think of that classic misinterpretation by the older generation when “One Toke Over the Line” was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971 because they thought it was a gospel song:



So in that spirit, I’d kinda like to hear the teabaggers get a little joy by wailing on the chorus to Jimmy Buffett’s “Fruitcakes,” thinking it an homage to a favorite dessert....