Spectator's Journal: Songs for a Saturday
Chapman, Steve
that Medicare recipients most need. Finally, as the Institute for Policy Innovation points out, the federal government could help everyone by loosening FDA control of pharmaceutical...
...Congress should follow the injunction to first do no harm...
...One conservative staffer acknowledges that "we should be pushing for Breaux-Thomas," since any s~and-alone plan would be a second-best solution...
...A sample: "Once two strangers climbed old Rocky Top lookin' for a moonshine still...
...Sentiments that would invite rolled eyes or derisive snorts elsewhere are given emphatic social approval...
...Damn straight...
...We're gonna beat you all to chig-gar-roogar-rem...
...I'm so glad I go to TSU...
...Admittedly, standing for principle could prove politically costly...
...Old-fashioned, inscrutable, and often laden with more corn than the Iowa state fair, the song has an importance that is hard to explain...
...Wake up the echoes...
...grandeur is so unthreatening as to make it downright winsome...
...Central Arkansas has a monosyllabic tune that only rarely rhymes, beginning "Go, go, fight Bears, Yon will lead us on to victoe/, Hey, go, go, win team, Bears will charge the field and never yield...
...these is like trying to laugh when Dennis Miller is talking...
...even a diehard Domer-hater has trouble suppressing a tingle up the spine...
...Providing Medicare vouchers to the elderly would allow them to select coverage that included a prescription benefit, while avoiding the problem of adverse selection...
...But a GOP unwilling to fight for anything is unworthy of reelection...
...Rousing too: When a stadium full of Notre Dame disciples belts out, "Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame, wake up the echoes cheering her name, send a volley cheer on high, shake down the thunder from the sky...
...Oklahoma's fight song sounds as if it were composed during World War II, when words were subject to strict rationing: "Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, Boomer, Sooner, O-K-U...
...Georgia Tech gets a bit carried away stressing its technological prowess: "I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer, a helluva, helluva, helluva, hell of an engineer...
...Appalachian State tries to top that by bragging that its mountaineers are "always a-winning, always a-grinning, always a-feeling fine...
...It lets you simultaneously proclaim your allegiance to something greater than yourself and feel at one with those around you doing likewise...
...Traditional virtues may be out of fashion in many venues, but on an}' autumn Saturday you can find youngsters with body piercings and strangely colored hair celebrating lo p alty, teamwork, and reverence for those who have gone before, not to inention such quaint traits as "vim" and "steam...
...Some songs, read as though they were written on a tight deadline by a mercenary composer...
...Which, of course, assumes a President Bush and GOP Congress...
...from the tummy of the Grizzly Bear...
...P E C T A T O R ' S J O U R N . ~ by Steve Chapman Songs for a Saturday College fight songs teach more than colleges do...
...S Ports fans have lower rates of depression than other people, according to a stud?, done at the University of Kansas that was recently reported on the front page of the New York Times...
...But when the band swings into the chorus ("Hail to the victors valiant, hail to the conqu'ring heroes"), the most indolent cynic may find himself looking for a water bucket with which to charge the gates of Hell...
...Cornhuskers will get no more than half an argument when they salute "Dear Old Nebraska U, where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest, of any old place that I know...
...If you think poetry has no audience these days, you're looking in the wrong place...
...But a thorough scientific investigation of the causes might also give some credit to one of the most powerful mood enhancers ever devised bv man: the college fight song, now playing at a stadium near you...
...Partisans of the University of South Dakota pledge, "Our sons and daughters ever will be loyal and true to thee, varsity, varsity, hail varsity USD...
...Johns Hopkins delivers the dire news that victory "will have to wait, 'til the moon hlrns green and the brass band plays 'God Shave the Dean...
...But when it comes to simplicity, there is no rival to the Tennessee State fight song, which consists, in its entirety, of the following: 'Tin so glad I go to TSU...
...Then President Bush and a Republican Congress can deal with it...
...Singing Glory Hallelujah, I'm so glad...
...Where is Julia Ward Howe when we need her...
...Montana pays curious tribute to its mascot: "&ld the squeal of the pig will float on the air...
...And it beats a sock in the kabelina...
...To the lips, to the eyes, to the girls who will love us some day...
...Some of the idiosyncrasy is not quite so florid...
...Shake down the thunder...
...But our age suffers from a shortage of satisfying rituals, and the fight song is one that is open to any and all, anytime...
...Teams venturing to challenge DePaul must quake on hearing their opponents hailed thus: "Let the battle wage and threaten, yours the victory to claim, for we will fight beneath your standard proud, exulting in your name...
...Other schools prefer triumphalist anthems that would have served quite adequately to welcome Julius Caesar home from his conquests...
...As tempting as it might be for Congress to adopt a quick-fix measure, ill-considered action today would generate counterproductive consequences for Americans for years to come...
...he changed his mind...
...Olaf's chorus features the phrase "Urn Ya Ya"-- 14 times in a row...
...Finally, as the Institute for Policy Innovation points out, the federal government could help everyone by loosening FDA control of pharmaceutical development, thereby reducing costs...
...One verse, paying copious tribute to the school colors, goes, "Blue are the billows that bow to the sun when yellow-robed morning is due...
...This sort of rhetoric might seem intolerably overbearing in the age of sensitivity, but in this context, the striving for It's a measure of the pecufarity of the genre that there may be no better fight song than over-the-top Michigan's...
...Ridiculous...
...But there are no limits on what can go into a fight song...
...Purdue's faithful declare, "Where the Wabash spreads its valley, filled with joy our voices raise, from the sky in swelling echoes come the cheers that tell the tale of your victories and your heroes...
...It makes you feel good doing it...
...Maybe that explains why, when Colorado Rockies slugger and former Vols quarterback Todd Helton was asked by reporters if he could sing the fight song, he replied, "I can but I won't...
...The fight song is a peculiarly Nnerican organism, incapable of propagating except in its native soil-which is college campuses in general and football games in particular...
...Complained another GOP congressional aide: "I guess the attitude now is let's punt till the next Congress...
...But after being mercilessly serenaded in the halls of his high school with some of the more enigmatic lines of the Aggie War Hymn ("Hullabaloo, ca-neck, ca-neck...
...But where it works, nothing works better...
...But that aas never going to happen this year...
...William Thomas (R-Calif...
...And somehow, no matter what goes in, what comes out manages to be captivating, at least to some...
...Several schools have borrowed "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," producing lines like, "Glory, Glory, Colorado, Hurrah for the Silver and Gold," though nothing about tailbacks trampling out the vintage or terrible swift sword wideouts...
...Some years back, a star Louisiana running back signed a letter of intent for Texas A&M...
...TD,ing to be morose while singing one of STEVE CHAPMAN iS a columnist for the Chicago Tribune...
...Tennessee eschews the usual conventions in favor of the old bluegrass ditty "Rocky Top," which has nothing to do with college or football...
...Colgate announces, "Foes shall bend their knee before us, and pay their homage to pow'r so great...
...I'm so glad I go to TSU...
...Much of the appeal is that it allows the public expression of simple and even excruciatingly hokey sentiments, at high volume, without fear of embarrassment...
...For better or worse, anything goes...
...N o school is more over-the-top than Michigan, though, and it's a measure of the peculiarity of the genre that there may be no better fight song anywhere...
...N The American Spectator _9 ;November ~ooo 77...
...as one Republican staffer observed, "being Clinton-lite doesn't make it a better idea...
...Among the simpler versions are those of Missouri ("Fight, Tigers, fight for Old Mizzou, right behind you, everyone is with you"), Arizona State ("Fight, Devils, down the field, fight with your might and don't ever yield"), Texas Tech ("Fight, Raiders, fight, fight, Raiders fight, Fight for the school we love so dearly"), and North Carolina ("Hold that line, hold 'era fast, we'll reach victory at last...
...Blue are the curtains that evening has spun, the slumbers of Phoebus to woo...
...This is an irony-free zone...
...The unusual blend of ancestor worship, free-flowing sentiment, and martial fervor found in college fight songs doesn't work just anpa,here...
...As for the elderly, Washington should cover pharmaceuticals as part of a broader overhaul of Medicare, a course advocated by George W. Bush...
...Texas A&I representatives are exhorted to "sock their kabelinas, you Javelinas...
...John Breaux of Louisiana led a majority of members of the Commission on Medicare Reform in proposing to allow beneficiaries to choose among competing plans...
...He could have ended up someplace where the lyrics are not just unique but downright bewildering...
...College fight songs fall into three basic categories: 1. prosaic exhortations to fight and win, 2. specimens of shameless bombast, and 3" compositions that might have 76 No v e m b e r ~ o o o - The American Spectator been produced by half a dozen fraternity brothers after too many kegs of Budweiser...
...blue are the blossoms to memory dear, and blue is the sapphire and gleams like a tear...
...Strangers ain't come down from Rocky Top, reckon they never will...
...Skeptics may suspect that college fight songs like that endure only because, as Mark Twain said, "the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it...
...Economic prosperity, scientific discover}r and technological innovation have all combined in the form ofpharmaceuticals to offer new hope for the sick...
...chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and Democratic Sen...
...Destroying the pharmaceutical industry would yield little financial relief for consumers or the government, but would deny everyone the medicines that have done so much to save and improve lives...
...This toast is given at Maine: "To the Gods, to the Fates, to the rulers of men and their destinies...
...Maybe this is because the?: have less time to read, listen to lachrymose country hal]ads, watch presidential debates, or read the NewYork Times...
Vol. 33 • November 2000 • No. 9
