So Thatcher died. She was like Regan, but before he was cool. All of his stuff: ruining education, breaking unions, fucking the economy, closing factories forever, laying the ground work for our current financial collapse – she did it all first. This makes her kind of unpopular with people who were negatively effected by austerity. So they went onto itunes and other fine purveyors of mp3s and bought copies of Judy Garland singing ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.’
Meanwhile at the BBC – an institution that does not have an equivalent in the US, but let’s pretend it’s like NPR . . .. Imagine if NPR played the top 40 countdown every week. And imagine if this song was being downloaded in response to Regan. Imagine the exploding heads on Fox News.
The BBC has played all the top40 tunes every week since 1967. There’s a tradition to uphold. Or something. But the Conservative party is in charge of government right now and austerity is all the rage, so no way are they playing the whole song. They’re just going to play a few seconds of it.
One difference between the US and the UK is that in the UK, the slightly-more-left party actually has a spine. And rather a lot of people spend their 99p downloading Ms. Garland and do represent some sort of voice of the people, in a late-capitalism kind of way.
So a debate rages – which 6 seconds of the song will they play??!!!
And meanwhile, as we’re all laughing at this, major cuts to poor people just came into force – city governments are predicting a tsunami of homlessness and have no idea what to do. And the privatisation of the NHS started less than two weeks ago. So while the Ding Dong thing really is hilarious, it’s like the flying monkeys have vowed to appoint a new leader and double down on the policies of the wicked witch of the west.
so, um, lol?
