Free Republic

Tom Lehrer, the popular and erudite song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97. Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return. A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer...

Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97. His death was confirmed by David Herder, a friend. Mr. Lehrer’s lyrics were nimble, sometimes salacious and almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful. Accompanying himself on piano, he performed in nightclubs, in concert and on records that his admirers purchased, originally by mail order only, in the hundreds of thousands. But...

A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful. Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97. Lehrer’s lyrics were nimble, sometimes salacious and almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful. Accompanying himself on piano, he performed in nightclubs, in concert and on records that his admirers...

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Chicago who has become the Democratic Party's latest rising star, is drawing enough support from the entertainment industry to put on his own variety show. From comedian Chris Rock to singer Barbra Streisand to musician Herbert Hancock, entertainers have written out checks of $1,000 or $2,000 to help the 42-year-old Illinois state senator win the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Film directors Rob Reiner ("The American President") and Edward Zwick ("The Last Samurai" and "Courage Under Fire") both contributed in the past three months, according to Obama's...

I am the very model of a presidential candidate, From character to senator I know what to assassinate I lobby for the victims of injustice and adversities And care for those disabled when compared to my abilities. I've slept with movie stars and yachted with the Kennedys, I've copied their initials and shared in their amenities; And in the field of foreign wars my service is distinguished As soon as all the ugly rumors are extinguished. As soon as all the ugly rumors are extinguished. As soon as all the ugly rumors are extinguished. As soon as all the ugly...

In the entire weekend discussion of the President Bush’s “guest worker” proposal for (mostly) Mexicans in the United States, there was a yawning omission. Doesn’t anybody remember Tom Lehrer, George Murphy, or the braceros? As the master himself was wont to say, “Here’s a song about that.” Shortly after the 1964 election in which California elected a singer/actor, George Murphy, as its new Senator, Tom Lehrer presented his musical “salute to your new junior senator” at the legendary Hungry I in San Francisco. Some of what Lehrer said and sang, so long ago, requires updating. In his introduction to the...