Tom Lehrer's influence on political satire is still playing out today

Boston Globe

2 days ago

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Lehrer proved not just that the absurdity of American life could be an endlessly replenishing source of comedy, but that there was a decent-sized audience for that comedy.
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Lehrer's subject matter encompassed the nuclear arms race ('Who's Next,' 'A Song for World War III,' 'We Will All Go Together When We Go'), organized religion ('Vatican Rag'), the sanctimony of self-satisfied liberals ('The Folk Song Army'), bigotry ('I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,' 'National Brotherhood Week'), military might as a tool of diplomacy ('Send the Marines'), saccharine nostalgia ('My Home Town,' 'Bright College Days'), the falsity of Hemingway-style glamorization of bullfighting ('In Old Mexico'), and unusual forms of recreation ('Poisoning Pigeons in the Park').
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Few satirists have zeroed in on contradiction, hypocrisy, or inanity with more scalpel-like precision than Lehrer.
In the prescient 'Pollution,' he sang: 'Pollution, pollution/ You can use the latest toothpaste/And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.' With 'Whatever Became of Hubert?', Lehrer lampooned onetime liberal lion Hubert Humphrey, whose voice grew muted after he agreed to be Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president: 'Whatever became of Hubert?/Has anyone heard a thing?/Once he shone, on his own/Now he sits home alone/And waits for the phone to ring.'
In 'Wernher von Braun,' Lehrer lampooned the morally flexible scientist who designed weapons for the Nazis and later worked for NASA, with the lyric, sung by Lehrer in a German accent: ''Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?/That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun.'
Dressed in a suit and tie and accompanying himself on the piano, Lehrer loved to upend expectations. His 'I Hold Your Hand in Mine' starts off as a delicate ballad but quickly turns disconcertingly … literal. There was a genius to some of his rhymes. In 'Smut,' he sang: 'Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?/I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley; But now they're trying to take it all away from us unless/We take a stand, and hand-in-hand we fight for freedom of the press/In other words: Smut!'
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Growing up in Manhattan, Lehrer saw a lot of Broadway musicals. And it showed. His affection for Gilbert and Sullivan was also palpable, especially in 'The Elements,' a listing of the chemical elements set to the tune of their classic patter song 'I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.'
Lehrer contributed songs to NBC's satirical 'That Was the Week That Was' (1963-1965), a US version of a British show, and later released the songs in an album titled 'That Was the Year That Was.' In the early '80s, his songs formed the spine of 'Tomfoolery,' a musical revue presented in London and New York.
His debut album, 'Songs by Tom Lehrer,' released in 1953, sold half-a-million copies,
But part of Lehrer's mystique stemmed from how relatively soon he left the public stage. Academia was where he felt most at home, and that's where he spent most of his life. He taught math at Harvard (which he had entered as a student when he was only 15) and MIT.
However much they mine similar territory, today's late-night TV hosts are different from Lehrer in one important respect: They are idealists. Disappointed idealists, to be sure, but idealists all the same.
Not Lehrer, at least not on the evidence of his songs. What undergirds his comedy is a certain wised-up quality. Not disillusionment, because he had no illusions to shatter. Whereas today's political satirists
seek not just to garner laughs but to change minds, you always got the sense that Lehrer was primarily interested in amusing himself. His brilliance was such that he ended up amusing the rest of us as well.
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He famously said that 'Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.'
Lehrer was wrong about that. And he himself was a big part of the reason why.
Don Aucoin can be reached at