My father yells ‘What you gonna do with your life?’
Oh daddy dear, you know you’re still number one
But girls, they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have fun . . .
Cyndi Lauper’s breakaway hit had a hook that never left you—it echoed through your brain until you couldn’t bear to think of anything else. It was recorded in 1983 for her first solo album She’s So Unusual, and Cyndi was so unusual. The song became her personal anthem (but not so much that 30-plus other performers didn’t also cover it) and the anthem of the time-period. Ronny Reagan was in the White House screwing the environment (he made jokes about strip-mining the White House rose garden) and the country with his voodoo economics, and so bubble-gummy music had to come back to balance things out.
Cyndi opened her mouth and told us the truth: Yes, girls did just want to have fun. After all, you’re only young once. (OK, maybe you can be young twice. Look at Tom Cruise, embalmed with Scientology)
Fast-forward a bit. The anthem for THIS time-period? The Rich Just Wanna Stay Rich! I think Mitt Romney should release it on his “Anything for the White House” label.
America’s 640+ billionaires will do anything to keep their big funds. They’ll get their bankers to throw you out your homes; they’ll French-kiss Christian fundamentalism while hugging their gay friends; they’ll talk about Americanism and patriotism and good ol’ USA know-how while building more factories in Timbuctu; they’ll bad-mouth Obamacare even though Mitt invented it a decade ago in Massachusetts; they’ll spend billions to give themselves every tax-break under the sun and then complain that the Federal government just doesn’t work; they’ll eat cake while the private prisons they’re building force millions of people to eat stuff you wouldn’t feed your cat.
Yeah, the Rich Just Wanna Stay Rich.
I told you, baby, we’re down to one Rolls
Yeah, the Rich just wanna stay rich!
That Central Park apartment at 100 Mil
Ain’t enough for this sonovabitch!
I told ya baby, they’re the wrong kind of friends—
Oh, we Rich just wanna stay rich!
I can see it now: Choruses of kids singing it—those sweet young things down in Tribeca working their butts off at the shiny new Goldman Sachs “campus” headquarters that cost $2.1 billion, most of which came right out of our own hard-earned tax dollars (The Rich Just Wanna Stay Rich!). All those serious, grinning Mormon boys harmonizing while ringing doorbells for Mitt who’s still telling us that he left Bain Capital before it screwed the pants off millions of Americans (Yeah, The Rich Just Wanna Stay Rich!). Republicans belting it out while fighting every nickel of tax increase for people already making more money than they can spend in a lifetime, all for the old trickle-down lie (Yep, The Rich Just Wanna Stay Rich!).
Ah, what a great new song, boys. Where’s Irv Berlin when we need him?
