The hard driving classic rock number pounded out over the P.A. system as the closing notes to this week's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN to the delight of reveling conventioneers.
"I think it's completely unfair to be so misrepresented," [Nancy Wilson] said in a phone call to EW.com after [McCain's] speech. "I feel completely f---ed over." She and sister Ann Wilson then e-mailed the following exclusive statement:Interestingly, some of the original band members were draft dodgers who moved to Vancouver, British Columbia just prior to Heart's heyday, and the Wilson sisters relocated there as well, although it's not clear whether the former POW John McCain and his supporters were grooving to their work or that of Canadian studio musicians.
"Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women."
The song's similarly unvetted lyrics refer to the Barracuda as "lying low in the weeds" and accuse the Barracuda of "mak[ing] up something real quick" if "the real thing don't do the trick."
In the past, the GOP paid much closer attention to its musical accompaniments, as when it broadcast The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again during George W. Bush's year 2000 celebrations, but well advisedly switched back to some NASCAR banjo music before the line, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
McCain consultants preemptively nixed any reprise of that song at this year's convention for obvious reasons, among which may be its remarkable applicability.
It's enough to make one trot out the derivation and history of the word "maverick". Paging Bill Safire... Ask and ye shall find. Presto.
ReplyDeleteThat befits a reg’lar guy trying to head a free people’s government. And while we’re at it, let’s take a run at the Americanism most often tied like a tin can to McCain’s tail: maverick.
In the 1840s, Samuel Augustus Maverick was a Texas cattleman who refused to brand his cattle because he said it was cruel to the animals. Rather than hail him as a humane hero, his neighbors denounced him as a damned hypocrite because his kindness enabled him to lay claim to all the unbranded cattle that wandered onto his range. Lawsuits and shoot-’em-ups are said to have followed, but the result was a triumph of eponymy: the cattleman’s name, Maverick, became the word for an animal that bore nobody’s brand.
Gosh, how could I have missed the very next paragraph:
ReplyDeleteMaverick’s grandson and great-grandson became Texas politicians. In 1944, the former Representative Maury Maverick coined a word for bureaucratic obfuscation: gobbledegook. He said the language in official Washington sounded to him like the gobbling of a strutting turkey cock, “and at the end of the gobble there was a sort of gook.”
Double-word McCain-connection score!
Barracudas are actually more of a tropical fish and would never be found in Alaska.
ReplyDeleteMay I suggest that she instead use the moniker of Saraloon or if she wants to stay in the fish world, Sara the long nosed sucker.
Capper: Submitted for your approval...how about "sheefish" a member of the whitefish family of Alaska, also called inconnu, a word which is used in Alaska to represent the fish, and also is defined as "an unknown person, a stranger"
ReplyDelete-Soft Words and Broad Swords-
That works as well.
ReplyDelete