Tyler Bass
Forbidden Knowledge TV
April 11, 2015
Even when his satirical political songs were hits on the television airwaves of the 1960s, pianist Tom Lehrer still found them up against censorship by the networks. In 2015, a young songwriter has expanded on Lehrer’s satire of how the U.S. co-opted former Nazis like Wernher von Braun into its defense establishment. DeGhetaldi’s rendition takes his audience from the Gulf of Tonkin incident, to CIA involvement in South American regime change, and to the media manipulation aims of Project Mockingbird.
Here are the lyrics.
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi; he won’t even frown.
Nazi-schmazi, says Wernher von Braun
Don’t say that he’s hypocritical.
Say rather that he’s apolitical.
Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
You too may be a big hero
Once you’ve learned to count backwards to zero.
In German or the English, I know how to count down.
And I’m learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.
When he first launched Explorer into the great beyond
He tried to alleviate when it started to deviate.
We had to catch up to those commies somehow.
It’s a good thing we had lots of Wernher von Brauns.
While Paperclip was a depravity,
What’s worse is they lied about gravity.
But von Braun didn’t frown and said, this rings a bell.
Now go fetch me more Germans and do it mach schnell.
Now, at the end of his days with more time to reflect
He chose to disclose some notions verboten.
They plan to deceive us with make-believe threats,
And the Cold War was nothing compared to what’s next.
And after the Russians it’s the terrorists,
And then third-world countries will be scariest.
And soon asteroids become the new enemy,
And the best part will be the fake war with ET.
Now, when the good old OSS took from old Berlin town,
They fed us with platitudes as they pillaged each latitude.
And Gehlen told Allen, I’ve got this one down.
We’ll tell them the commies just won’t come around.
So they pretend we’re always at war,
That we’ll be nuked like Sodom and Gomorrah.
They did it back then and they’ll do it today.
Why do you think that they killed JFK?
Now, if you’re found by the CIA, don’t be alarmed.
Just plan your allegiance as they force you into obedience.
They’ll boil you a bit and pretend that you’ll drown
And they’ll still get away with it because you are brown.
And some might suggest it’s quite comical
To claim that it’s all just economical.
Once they get what they want, who care what you say
Just as long as you say it to the old CIA?
Now, they tried to kill Castro a few hundred times.
Their coups were quite sinister. Just ask the Iranian prime minister.
And poor Guatemala, how dare you decide
To elect your government? Oh, look, your president, he died.
And dare I say it’s rather rude
To stand up for United Fruit?
They’ll just call you commies. And who care if you’re not?
And oh, in Cambodia, they helped some dude named Pol Pot.
In Syria they staged a quick coup d’état.
They tried to disarm Indonesia’s Sukarno.
And Congo’s Lumumba they shot in the face
And they forced out Allende for old Pinochet.
They even helped the Dalai Lama
And they ousted Nkrumah in Ghana.
And Goulart went FUBAR and probably was killed,
But they won’t share the files from that coup in Brazil.
They watched Papa Doc and his sweet little babe
As they plundered their nation, another CIA creation.
And they coup’ed Vietnam and then still wanted more,
So they faked the Gulf of Tonkin to get a new war.
The history books are still murky
About what happened in Poland and Turkey
And Oliver North, surely he told the truth.
But I guess we won’t know ’cause he shredded the proof.
They armed the mujahedeen to the teeth,
Yet they still tried to hide they created al-Qaeda.
And ISIS is simply just more of the same.
If you still keep buying it, you’re just insane.
Does the fact that it’s all still quite classified
Make you the slightest dissatisfied
Like poor Chavez? So they gave him a cancerous blight,
And Jack Ruby was screwed even though he was right,
That they’re infecting us with apathetic delight,
While the Mockingbird sings sweetly so long goodnight.
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