"Men as well as women festooned their hair with plumes and feathers, and tied ribbons to each bouncing curl. Some men took to wearing high-heeled shoes - not clunky platform shoes, but slender, spiky heels up to six-inches high - and carrying furry muffs to keep their hands warm. Some carried parasols in the summer. They became known as macaronis, from a dish they first encountered in Italy."
Bill Bryson in his book The Home
"Yankee Doodle went to town, a riding on a pony. / He stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni."
Take a moment to consider those words. Now, ask yourself: What do they mean? Think specifically about the word "macaroni" and what it meant at the time Yankee Doodle was a riding on his pony. Perhaps you think it has no meaning; that the lyricist found himself four syllables and a rhyme for "pony" short, and pulled "macaroni" out of the air. Well, you would be wrong. Or, maybe you think a witty lyricist was trying to create the image of Yankee Doodle with a noodle on his noodle. Well, you would be wrong again.
Yankee Doodle is a song our children are taught in kindergarten, and which they proudly sing while waving small flags - not just any flag, they wave Old Glory - on the Fourth of July. A joyous and patriotic display, you say. Sadly, it is not.
Remember, in the late 18th Century, when Yankee Doodle went to town, macaroni had little to do with the stuff in a box with Kraft on the label, and everything to do with the effeminate, the degenerate and the sexually deviant. Because Kraft Foods did not exist then, the "macaroni" in the song cannot refer to macaroni and cheese, and must, therefore, refer to "macaroni" as in prissy, dandified and morally repugnant.
Now, I for one believe - and if I believe it, it must be true - that the Yankee Doodle who topped the charts in 1776 never referred to himself or his attire as "macaroni." He couldn't. It is simply not possible. Ask yourself: Is macaroni, with the connotations it had at the time, the image a patriotic lyricist would have selected for the symbol of our fledgling country as it fought for independence? Of course not.
The lyrics we know today make it seem that Yankee Doodle went to town doused in perfume; that he wore a feathered cap and spiked heels and had ribbons in his hair; that he carried a parasol in case the sun got too hot and a muff lest his hands get cold. The truth is, this Yankee Doodle is not dandy. He is a dandy, a fop, a sissy in fancy clothes.
Thanks to the intellectuals, the gays, the bleeding hearts, the communists, the atheists, the agnostics, the enemies of freedom and the mollycoddlers, who obviously altered the lyrics to suit their so-called politically correct notions, the Yankee Doodle our founding fathers admired has been lost. I'd like to think the pinkos overlooked the line "and with the girls be handy." I want to believe that means Yankee was a testosterone-laden hunk of masculinity, a real American male, a slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am guy. But the word "macaroni" makes it clear that the people who surreptitiously altered the lyrics want us to envision Mr. Doodle, hairdresser.
But Yankee Doodle can be pulled from the morass of immorality. By changing just one line, we can re-image Yankee Doodle the girly-boy, restore the lyricist's original intent and morph Yankee into the American ideal - a man who shoots first and asks questions later; a man who says "go ahead, make my day" and "bring 'em on;" a man who proudly listens to Rush Limbaugh. Let us take a pen and turn "Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" into "Punched a leftie in the mouth and shot him with an Uzi." Yankee Doodle will get his manhood back, and American males will be free to be men again. Real men.
Tomorrow's topic is the cesspool of public education. Did you know our school children must to listen to music dedicated to striptease artists? In music appreciation classes all across the country students are exposed to a piece of perversion called "Air on the G String," by some foreigner named Bach. And did you know that many high school English students are required to read a poem about a flaming homosexual? They are. The poem is called "The Faerie Queene," written by Edmund Spenser, a limp-wristed Englishman who obviously can't spell. Tomorrow, I'll explain how you can fight back against this flood of perversion.
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