Bob CollinsThe surest sign that a once-functioning democracy is in its final days is when the New York Times turns to Weird Al Yankovic to analyze a presidential debate.
The latest Times’ op-doc features Yankovic and The Gregory Brothers teaming up to try to make us feel better, just as the dance band on the Titanic did.
One thing we’ve learned is that the hidden songs of the cosmos are full of surprises. When you take an unintentional singer and unveil the beautiful melody inside his or her spoken words, you never know what you’ll find. An uplifting, peppy ditty? An inspiring ballad? Occasionally you get really lucky and it’s a tasty Viennese waltz.
But we can’t say we were shocked that songifying the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump revealed a terrifying space opera about bad hombres and nasty women. So terrifying, in fact, that it ripped open a wormhole to another dimension, and pulled an unsuspecting Weird Al Yankovic in from his home in a parallel universe to moderate the whole thing. Sorry about that, Weird Al. You deserve better than this. Don’t we all?
