The Emperor’s New Skin
A satirical song by Peter Brunette
“My name is Obama, and I’m quite the charmer.”
NOTE. The reader will find some irregular spellings in the lyrics to this song, so I’d best explain them. They stem from certain characteristics of the political scene in the USA. This decadent but still ferociously predatory imperial power, not unlike other core states of the capitalist world-system, is ruled by a single party, the Party of Capital, which maintains a façade of electoral choice by partitioning itself into two ostensibly warring camps. Their rivalry, however clamorous, does not extend to matters that affect the wealth or power of the country’s billionaire overlords, the monstrous expansion of its military-industrial complex, or the supremacy of the global North over the global South. One camp calls itself Democratic, although it is anti-democratic, and the other Republican, although it is anti-republican. In an effort to counter such flagrant hypocrisy, I substitute a k for the c in each name. Moreover, given that the Republikans are notoriously prone to nepotism, I here further substitute an i for the a, yielding “Republikin” (a spelling that, by a happy coincidence, is better suited to the song’s rhyme scheme).
Lyrics
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Lead Sheet & Chord Chart
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