‘The Merry Minuet’ is The Kingston Trio’s song from 62 years ago, that says a lot about these days, in this age.
In the song, Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane harmonized about hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needing rain, and about rioting, and nations going at each other… and the singers added, for a little irony, as I recall, ‘da..da..dada..dada..da,’ at the end of some of the lyrics.
The trio sang, as I’m recalling:
They’re rioting in Africa, da..da..dada..dada..da
They’re starving in Spain, da..da..dada..dada..da
There’s hurricanes in Florida, da..da..dada..dada..da
And Texas needs rain…
They sang about strife around the world, at that time:
The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles. Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch…
And, in the next lyric, one of the singers in the trio sang the words:
And I don’t like anybody very much!
Which got me thinking about a headline I’d just read in the Huffington Post:
Texas Republican Slams GOP For Hating ‘A Good Hunk of America.’
Michael Wood was among a number of Republicans who had thrown their hats in the ring to represent Texas’s 6th Congressional District. The GOP has “lost its way,” he said during an interview on MSNBC, suggesting his party “has no real ideas or policies other than, of course, owning those gosh-darned libs.”
And with what he said, next, I was hearing The Merry Minuet melody in my mind, but with Mr. Wood’s words:
We don’t like baseball. We don’t like Coke. We don’t like NASCAR. We don’t like Hollywood. We don’t like academia. We don’t like anything.
And since Mr. Wood is a fairly young guy, I’m thinking he hasn’t heard The Kingston Trio’s 62-year-old song, with their — “And I don’t like anybody very much!” — lyric. Because adding ‘very much’ to what Mr. Wood said, during his TV interview – “We don’t like anything”…”very much”… that would have punctuated his point about the GOP.
Da..da..dada..dada..da…
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.