![]() These words and like notes of alienation were excised from “This Land Is Your Land” when it was smoothed into the affirmative expression that soothes us today. ![]() One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steepleĪs they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if Woody Guthrie had composed “This Land Is Your Land” as a bitter parody of “God Bless America.” It had originally closed with the stanza: It is as secure in the pantheon of celebratory anthems as “America the Beautiful” and probably sits higher in the affections of school children than “The Star Spangled Banner.” Marching bands saluted the new president with its strains when they passed before him on Inauguration Day. Joe Klein reminds us that Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” has been recorded by such repositories of the national self-satisfaction as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the New Christy Minstrels, and Tex Ritter. This triumphant populist tribune is, of course, Mr. And so we have the revolution of Woody Guthrie’s dream: the Okies and their sons and daughters have elected a one-time California labor agitator president of the United States. ![]() The genius of our politics is the art of distracting the resentments of a cheated middle class and letting them fall upon a worse-cheated lower class. “Then my dad started having a little bad luck. ![]()
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