Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

In Bob Herbert's NYT column today, he discusses the contents of the Army's "School Recruiting Program Handbook." This publication offers recruiters advice on how to encourage high-school-age youngsters to enlist, e.g.:

"The football team usually starts practicing in August," the handbook says. "Contact the coach and volunteer to assist in leading calisthenics or calling cadence during team runs."

"Homecoming normally happens in October," the handbook says. "Coordinate with the homecoming committee to get involved with the parade."

Recruiters are urged to deliver doughnuts and coffee to the faculty once a month, and to eat lunch in the school cafeteria several times a month. And the book recommends that they assiduously cultivate the students that other students admire: "Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist."

This isn't the first sign that the military is having problems meeting its recruiting goals in these days of nigh-unto-2000 US combat deaths in Iraq. (For others, see for example this Google News query.)

But it did put me in mind of something, and that is how public sentiment about Operation Iraqi Enduring Freedom seems to have shifted. If you go back to the early 1970s, you'll find a similar shift mirrored in popular music -- particularly the type of music referred to as "bubblegum."

Bubblegum songs frequently could be identified by the inanity of their lyrics. (No one who listened to Top 40 radio in those days is likely to forget -- despite their best efforts --1969's ghastly "Sugar, ah honey honey/You are my candy girl/And you've got me wanting you.") But one other thing characterized them: the music itself. To call those tunes "catchy" is to do a grave injustice to the human mind's capacity for latching onto junk, and to the powers of media repetition. They took up residence in our heads where at least for some of us, obviously, they continue to rattle around some 30 years later. Melodic leeches.

By the early 1970s, though, some bubblegum pop had begun to morph into a strange blend of incessantly memorable tune and complex message. This was reflected particularly in two songs from that later chunk of the Vietnam era.

The first of these -- still among us in myriad forms -- was "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." Of course you can see a hundred yellow ribbons a day nowadays, seldom tied around trees of any kind but plastered across the bumpers and fenders of vehicles from coast to US coast. And this is so despite the song's lyrics, which assert that what has separated the narrator and his love was not war, but rather prison. It's such a perky little tune, I guess, and regardless of the specifics maybe all that's important is that he's coming home. (I do have a nodding acquaintance with the concept of metaphor.)

You can learn much more about the song, and the long tradition of tying ribbons to trees, from the invaluable Straight Dope. For now, though, I just want to make note of the way the song, and the tradition, has lodged in the public mind in a sort of die-hard rubber-stamp support-the-troops context. Family members come to blows about whether sticking a yellow ribbon-like magnet on your car is an act of true and perhaps even heroic patriotism, or merely one on the order of "This is sooooo much easier than supporting them in a meaningful way!"

Okay, now for the second bubblegum song -- this one from a year later, in 1974. I haven't heard it played since it was popular. And although it reached #1 on the pop charts for a couple of weeks, it never acquired the legs of "Yellow Ribbon."

The song was "Billy, Don't be a Hero." Here are the lyrics:

The marchin' band came down along Main Street.
The soldier blues fell in behind.
I looked across and there I saw Billy
Waiting to go and join the line,
And with her head upon his shoulder,
His young and lovely fiancee.
From where I stood I saw she was cryin'
And through her tears I heard her say:

"Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life.
Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife!"
And as he started to go,
She said, "Billy keep your head lo-o-ow!
Billy, don't be hero, come back to me."

The soldier blues were trapped on a hillside,
The battle raging all around.
The sergeant cried, "We've got to hang on boys!
We've got to hold this piece of ground --
I need a volunteer to ride up,
And bring us back some extra men..."
And Billy's hand was up in a moment,
Forgettin' all the words she said.

She said,
"Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life!
Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife!"
And as he started to go,
She said, "Billy, keep your head lo-o-ow!
Billy, don't be a hero, come back to me."

I heard his fiancee got a letter
That told how Billy died that day.
The letter said that he was a hero.
She should be proud he died that way.
I heard she threw that letter away.

(You can almost hear the thud of letdown in that last stanza, even though you may have seen it coming.)

How about it? Have we finally, finally dear God, shifted from the strutting yellow-ribbon to the more sober don't-be-a-hero-and-get-your-head-blown off stage?

Update: I just downloaded and listened to "Billy, Don't Be a Hero." Egad. The music, at least as rendered by Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods (there was another version by the similarly obscure "Paper Lace"), really does sink its hooks into the mind -- at least as badly as I remembered. Worst of all is the fife-and-drum opening and closing. That such a dark message could be wrapped in something so relentlessly cheerful-sounding is a triumph of either madness, incompetence, or irony. Talk about your metaphors.