…I may have been pessimistic about media coverage. A lot of readers tell me they’ve caught much better segments than I saw, and the Times is all over it this morning.
On a related note: you’ve probably received the Bomb Iraq song (“if you’re happy and you know it..”) in your inbox at least half a dozen times; lord knows I have. For those of you not up on the story, this is a rare instance in which we are able to definitively and unquestionably trace the origin of one of these viral memes. You see, the song made its first appearance in this very blog, courtesy of reader Albion Lawrence, who was inspired by this cartoon. Readers of Atrios’ blog soon picked up the ball and ran with it, and soon thereafter, it became one of those little email ditties that you forward on to everyone you know, if you’re the sort of person who does things like that.
And now it’s made an appearance in the paper of record:
Then there was Elaine Johnson, 59, a retired social worker from Rochester, who was buried beneath a mound of shawls, sweater and caftans, all of it topped by a foppy hat. A member of a group called the Raging Grannies, Ms. Johnson spent nearly seven hours on a bus with her friends, all of them similarly costumed. “We’ve got to stop the madness,” she said. “We came to rage against war, and we rage by singing.”
To make her point, she offered up one of the more popular ditties, sung to the tune “If You’re Happy and You Know It”:
If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your mamma, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudis and the banks take back your Audi
And the TV shows are bawdy, bomb Iraq.
Clearly, the influence of this blog is as pervasive as it is inconsequential.