FAMW: We Are All Cheeseheads!

Here in our corner of the blogosphere, we did give some thought to joining the National Day of Blogger Silence, to protest the supposed harassment of conservative bloggers by certain overly-zealous functionaries within the Federal government. As a Federal employee who has yet to be "caught" -- and who the hell reads this blog anyway, right? -- yours truly considered it more appropriate to proceed with business as usual. And so ...

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Today, we celebrate the great state of Wisconsin, "The Badger State." And speaking of badgering, all that out-of-state union money was spent for naught, as the people of this state had the unmitigated gall to decide for themselves, that Governor Walker was worth keeping in office to complete his term, in a recall vote where he won by a slightly wider margin than when first elected. It was the first time in American history that a sitting governor has survived a recall election -- there have been three altogether -- and for a Republican governor, in a state that traditionally leans Democratic.

The mainstream media, of course, made complete fools of themselves, as even Jon Stewart castigated MSNBC for their obviously skewed coverage of the event. “Yep, just like Obama drew it up on the chalk board. ‘Hey, guys, I got an idea. What if we could figure out a way to have the core of what we believe soundly rejected by voters in a swing state just five months before the national election? It might just be the boost we need.’”

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“Jump Around” is the first and most memorable hit, by the Irish-American hip-hop trio (huh???) known as House of Pain. It reached number three on the USA charts in 1992. A re-release the following year reached number eight in the UK. VH1's “100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop” clocked it in at number 66. We are not in a position to display the lyrics here. You can barely make them out in the recording. It's just as well, as the song appears to have taken on a life of its own beyond the lyrics.

The University of Wisconsin blasts this one over the speakers at every home football game at the end of the third quarter. Those cheeseheads know how to have a good time, yessiree Bob! Do you think they care one way or the other what the words say? Or course not. That's because the important message here is not the personal struggle of an angry young man from the suburbs who romanticizes living in urban poverty, while making more money than he knows what to do with. What matters here, is that there are times when everyone needs to "jump up, jump up and get down," know what I mean?

But wait, this gets better!

Such a phenomenon would not be complete without the Bollywood remix. Recent years have seen a number of movies come out of India's cinematic mecca, for the benefit of general audiences in America. Maybe it's because we all went ga-ga over Slumdog Millionaire, but it's more likely because Americans will buy anything if the price is right. And so, this third piece culminates our latest offering for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.

After viewing all three clips, you probably won't be able to get this song out of your head for several hours.

I love it when a plan comes together.