Wednesday, July 04, 2007

A Pitiful Helpless Giant

It's America's birthday, folks.

And in celebration, here's a clip of Paul Revere and the Raiders (America's band, for obvious reasons) -- doing their one great psychedelic hit, The Great Airplane Strike, on the Hollywood Palace variety show in early 1967.



Yes, that's Ray Bolger mangling the band intro, kind of like he was still in character as the Scarecrow of Oz.

A profoundly disheartening thought: At the moment that clip was first being broadcast, America was mired in a tragic, unnecessary, counterproductive, illegal and immoral war against a country that had not attacked us.

And nobody watching at the time -- least of all the dirty hippies who were trying to stop the killing -- could have possiby believed that forty years later, we would once again be mired in a tragic, unnecessary, counterproductive, illegal and immoral war against a country that had not attacked us.

Happy birthday, America.

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