@totallyallen: Tom Lehrer did clever better than anyone and dark better than anyone, but what he really did better than anyone, including himself, was write songs that touched on what were then contemporarily concerning—and what are now distressingly durable—political and social issues. Here is Werner von Braun, one of Lehrer’s Big Three—in that latter category at least—and perhaps the most entertaining entry point to learning about Operation Paperclip you could ever ask for. On a personal note, I recommend checking out the version of this tune on his That Was The Year That Was album. It’s a bit jauntier and instead of calling the first astronaut destined to land on the moon an “idiot” as he does here, Tom calls him “some clown” in a way that is so disdainfully dismissive it has stuck with me for, at this point, decades and made me question NASA’s existence. Or at least their budget. Too bad we never got him on the record about Elon’s plans for Mars and the poor moron fated to touch down there. RIP Tom Lehrer April 9, 1928 – July 26, 2025 #tomlehrer #wernervonbraun #operationpaperclip #rockets #satire #musicalcomedy

Allen Strickland Williams

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Tuesday 29 July 2025 14:50:52 GMT