AOI2 and "Today's Tom Sawyer"

=v= The thing that made "Today's Tom Sawyer" funniest to me how well-suited it was to Fry's times, thought that made it work, but rather the contrast between the ideas expressed in the song vs. the way Fry puts it to use.

=v= Rush, a band with politically conservative ideas who dedicated one of their albums to "the genius of Ayn Rand," released that song during the years when Ronald Reagan was the nominal head of their neighbor to the south. The Reagan Administration was pumping up the U.S. economy with truly massive deficit spending, but conservatives have a huge blind spot about government spending when it's for military reasons, so instead they put forth a myth that the economic boom was the result of pioneering entrepreneurs. "Today's Tom Sawyer" is basically about these enterpreneurs, so it became sort of an anthem for the whole myth.

=v= Now, if this song was supposed to inspire a new generation of Randroids to go out and be entrepreneurial, it didn't seem to work very well on Fry. He probably just riffed off the lyric that seemed to be about Space Invaders. <_Jym_>

On 15 Jan 2002 14:37:00 -0800, Jym Dyer wrote:

They do have some conservative ideas, but I wouldn't characterize them as conservatives. They also have ideas that are more liberal or libertarian.

America's first line of defense against a Soviet nuclear attack is the DEW line, a series of radar installations across Alaska and Northern Canada. Rush used the name Distant Early Warning (DEW) for a song warning about environmental, and other issues.

"There's no swimming in the heavy water No singing in the acid rain Red Alert"

Then there's the song A Passage to Bangkok about the Thailand Express, a train that runs to Bangkok by way of Bogota Columbia, Jamaica, Acapulco, Morocco, Afghanistan, Nepal and Lebanon.

"Our first stop is in Bogota To check Columbian fields. The natives smile and pass along A sample of their yield."

On the same album as Tom Sawyer is a song called Vital Signs. "Every body's got to deviate from the norm". Not exactly a conservative mantra.

"Larry" wrote in message news:[email]...

That struck me as referring to that general fear of being a face in the crowd that's so prevelant nowadays. (Especially as individuality is attacked more and more.) Huxley talks about it in the "sequel" to Brave New World. With 6 billion people in the world, it's impossible to be unique, and very very difficult to be important or stand out. I could go into A*n R*nd, but I don't have a very good feeling about where that particular off-topic would end up.

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002 20:49:05 GMT, "LooseChanj" wrote:

I'll certainly agree with you there. My main exposure to Rand's work was from Rush and I've read only a little to see what they were talking about. Of course, by the year 3000, Rand's work is often flushed down the toilet along with crumpled porn (I Second That Emotion).

--Larry

=v= Damn, what a mangled sentence. I blame computers. What it shoulda said was:

=v= The thing that made "Today's Tom Sawyer" funniest to me was *not* how well-suited it was to Fry's times, though that made it work, but rather the contrast between the ideas expressed in the song vs. the way Fry puts it to use.

    <_Jym_>