Five songs President Obama could sing to drive home our national indebtedness

​Let's not kid ourselves: our national fiscal house isn't anything close to in order these days. By all rights, our government should be shut down right now. Congress is perpetually fighting tooth and nail to figure out which budgetary sacred cows to sacrifice. And it's hard to make it through newspaper articles without wondering if some of the hardcore repo-man situations detailed in this crap sci-fi novel could actually come to fruition.

Meanwhile, President Obama will have to give some speeches about this situation, speeches that no-one other than political junkies will pay much attention to until the 2012 election cycle rolls around. When he was running for office in 2008, Obama gave great speeches about this and that, mark-striking orations full of hope and humility and sacrifice.

Gimme Noise has no doubt that Obama has lots more great speeches in his quiver. But maybe whenever it's time for the president to mount the presidential dias with the presidential seal and bust out some economic sooth-saying that everyone can understand, he should just skip the speech and break into song -- maybe a couple songs, even.

We've got a couple suggestions.


Al Jolson, "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?"



Now, I'm not a billionaire, but if I was -- if I were up to my goatee in liquid cash and living in a diamond mansion on a mountain of gold -- I would totally cut the government a big, fat Jay-Z sized check if the prez went out on national television and started singing this song unscripted in a thoughtful, heartfelt way, removing the microphone from the lectern and wandering through the press gallery, serenading The New York Times, then The Nation, then maybe The Progressive and The Washington Post, eyes shut tightly with feeling, falling to his knees, et all. Of course, there's a risk that everyone would take the president's performance of this as a late April Fool's Day joke.


Devin the Dude, "The Almighty Dollar"



This would be awesome if only because the American public has never heard a sitting president swear openly on television.


Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Down On The Corner"



Obviously, the presidential press conference would have to take place on an actual street corner somewhere in Washington, D.C., maybe on the back of an old Ford pick-up truck while street-hardened street toughs pummel one another beyond the point of no return.


Spinal Tap, "Gimme Some Money"



The resulting consensus view: Obama's lost his damn mind, finally snapping under all the stress he'd so artfully concealed for so long. But then maybe it'd all become some sort of viral meme/cause scenario, some hyper-ironic trend, with sales of Spinal Tap merchandise spiking and hipsters hurling gunny sacks full of ones over the White House gates and the country being able to pay make good on a couple of its smaller outstanding debts for, like, two months. What does it say about our world that the above seems even mildly plausible as an outcome?


The Ramones, "53rd and 3rd"



Is including an old Ramones song about a war veteran turning tricks too much of a stretch for a blog post like this? I would argue that it isn't by saying that you might be shocked to discover what your friends and neighbors do to hold onto what they have and take care of their own -- and you might be equally shocked at what you might do, if everything came crumbling apart.