The mind of the beholder

 It's a summer morning in (let's say) 1967 and I'm lying in bed trying to think of a reason to get up.  The radio is on, of course, WBAI of course, and Larry Josephson, the world's grumpiest morning man, is sharing his rage at having to wake up early with a devoted fan base.  Suddenly, I forget why (probably some story about a fresh outrage in the Catholic Church), he puts on "The Vatican Rag."  I didn't quite fall out of bed laughing but close.  I made careful note of the performer's name and resolved to go looking for the album by this Tom Lehrer.  Eventually I found all three and set about memorizing all the songs as only a disgruntled sixteen-year-old can.  "Everybody say his own kyrie eleison, Doin' the Vatican Rag."  Is this even permitted?  Does the FCC know?  (Pacifica/WBAI and the F-CC would clash years later but it would involve George Carlin and reach the Supreme Court.  Another story.)

By the time I got to college Lehrer had taken up residence in my mental attic alongside Jean Shepherd, the Marx Brothers, the usual gang of idiots who created MAD Magazine, the Goon Show (on NPR and eventually albums from the BBC), Bob Newhart -- the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company was clearly the inspiration for Southwest -- and eventually some brainy Britons who styled themselves Monty Python's Flying Circus.  And you wonder why I'm this way.  The world seemed out of control, the war nobody wanted ground on because nobody knew how to stop it, the best were shot down while the worst were full of passionate intensity.  I retreated into the attic and never really left.

Lehrer died last week at 93, in California where he taught at UC Santa Cruz after walking away from the folk/protest/satire scene.  "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize," he noted in 1973.  (I wonder what he thought of Trump's obscene obsession with claiming one or more for himself.)  He graduated from Harvard at 19 and worked for the National Security Agency at Los Alamos, but the establishment failed to make him one of their own.  Some years ago he created a website with all his lyrics.  "I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs," he wrote.  "So help yourselves, and don't send me any money."  

I thought of Lehrer while reading the latest complaint from the ever ludicrous One Million Moms and their battle against the summer ad campaign from Jimmy John's, which is offering a "romantasy" audiobook when you order a sandwich.  The Moms are incensed about the ad's "extremely suggestive wording, paired with rose petals and slowly dripping ranch sauce," and they haven't even heard the book yet.  It's simple, ladies -- sex sells.  Professor Lehrer explained it long ago:

His song, his so-called voice and his piano, as he described it.  Thank you, Tom.

Postscript:  Did you know the Vatican has a jail?  Indeed it has, and Rev. Carlo Alberto Capella spent years in the world's tiniest hoosegow for possessing and sharing child pornography.  He has now returned to work in the Holy See's Secretariat of State.  Cue "The Vatican Rag"!