Road Apples by Tim Sanders
June 3, 2013

Anatomy of a Column



I got the feeling I was about to have an epiphany while lying in bed late Wednesday night, so I went to the bathroom to see if I couldn't do something about it. I was right, I couldn't, because it wasn't a bathroom epiphany, it was the other kind. It was an inspirational, journalistical epiphany, and that epiphany kept swimming around in my head all night. By Thursday morning I was sitting at my computer desk, ready to unload my inspiration for the benefit of my readers. All three of them.

At some point Wednesday afternoon, a news commentator had referred to the President as “Barry.” This, naturally, brought Barry Goldwater to mind. For those too young to remember, Barry Goldwater was a conservative senator who ran against Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. One of the most critical components of that election, as I remember it, was a song called “Barry's Boys,” made famous by four folk singers known, oddly enough, as the Chad Mitchell Trio. I'm not sure, but I believe that when the fourth member left, the three remaining singers renamed themselves “Simon and Garfunkel.” But regardless of their problems with math, the trio did a fine job with “Barry's Boys,” which was a satirical look at young people who had lost their minds and become ... pardon my language ... conservative Republicans. In those days, folk singers could not satirize liberal Democrats, because ... well, because folk singers were all liberal Democrats. Conservative Republicans either danced to polkas, or listened to–God help them–country music.

But I digress. “Barry's Boys” was a lively little tune which started out like this:


We're the bright young men

Who want to go back to 1910,

We're Barry's Boys.


We're the kids with a cause,

Yes a government like grandma's,

We're Barry's Boys.


It went on to salute a number of names which would mean nothing today, but back then were either in the news or at least cited in history books. And of course history books were ... oh, never mind. Today's youth wouldn't know about history books unless they managed to read about them in a ... well, a history book. So with the tune to “Barry's Boys” dancing through my head, it occurred to me that a new version of “Barry's Boys”, satirizing an actual President Barry whose administration certainly has plenty to satirize, was just what we needed. The first couple of verses seemed to write themselves:


We're not bright young men,

But we'd like to go back and vote again,

We're Barry's Boys.


We love to cuss and shout,

With drawers down low and butts hanging out,

We're Barry's Boys.


As I sat at my keyboard, I realized that finding rhymes for the old Obama Chicago gang wouldn't be as easy as I'd thought. Oh sure, there were words like “impolite” and “fright” to match up with Jeremiah Wright. That was easy enough. And Bill Ayers rhymed with “blank stares” and “musical chairs.” I also managed to put “parrot” with Valerie Jarrett, but then things got tough. I struggled for over an hour trying to find rhymes for Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Tony Resko. When nothing came to me, I turned my efforts to Rod Blagojevich. I might be able to write an Obama song without the others, but I couldn't leave Blago out. He's now known as “The Breck Girl in Cellblock Six,” but that didn't make rhyming any easier. I finally squeezed out “balogna sandwich,” but it didn't seem to fit so I consoled myself with the knowledge that come hell or high water, dang it all, I could most certainly come up with rhymes for Joe Biden and Eric Holder. They weren't from Chicago, but I'm sure they've visited the Windy City more than once. In the meantime, I decided to go to YouTube and listen to the old Chad Mitchell Trio's version of “Barry's Boys” for rhyming inspiration. That was when my journalistical, inspirational “Barry's Boys” epiphany fell apart.

When I typed “Barry's Boys,” Chad Mitchell Trio, onto my YouTube search engine, the second offering, right there at the top of the page, was a parody of “Barry's Boys” by a fellow named Tyler Lombardi. It had been on YouTube since 2009, and it still worked. It was quite different from what I'd been working on, but the point was that it had already been done. I'd done all of my sweating over Axelrod and Blagojevich for nothing. This week's column was not to be. Not the “Barry's Boys” column, anyway. It was Thursday afternoon, and my column was due Friday morning. So I did what all professional journalists do when faced with a deadline. I panicked. I had to shift gears.

So what's left of this week's column will deal with pencil heads. The pencil head in question appeared in a May 29, 2013 AP article which immediately catches your attention by stating:

“BERLIN - German doctors say a man spent 15 years with a pencil in his head following a childhood accident.”

The article also said: “[T]he 24-year-old man from Afghanistan sought help in 2011 after suffering for years from headaches, constant colds and worsening vision in one eye, A scan showed that a ... 4-inch pencil was lodged from his sinus to his pharynx and had injured his right eye socket. The unnamed man said he didn't know how the pencil got there but recalled that he once fell badly as a child.”

Yes, the doctors extracted the pencil and the gentleman recovered. According to that article, “[T]he case was presented for the first time at a medical conference this week.” High on their list of priorities was, obviously, the latest in pencil removal techniques. There was no mention of the pencil's condition post surgery.

I realize that the pencil-removal story can't measure up to the promise of my new “Barry's Boys” song, but nobody's perfect. Hey, with the Benghazi scandal, the IRS scandal, and the AP and anti-First Amendment scandals all swirling around the White House, if you must have a song parody, you could write your own.
You can throw in a few dozen Joe Biden quotes, just for style.