Republican Senator Orrin Hatch Songwriting Prowess: Headed Home (for Senator Ted Kennedy)

In our continuing series on Republican Politicians who double as songwriters, Orrin Hatch wrote this song last year about Teddy Kennedy, who died on Tuesday. The Huffington Post pointed out that it was originally about Kennedy "heading home" to the Senate after his sickness, but it doubles perfectly as a eulogy, he's heading home to Kennedy heaven? We saw Ted Kennedy with our congresswoman Barbara Lee plug for Obama at a black church in Oakland, where he really roared - my comments on that were blogg'd here.

DELAYS PLAGUE POLICE DISCIPLINE PROGRESS

Yesterday, we were having a late brunch at Sam's Log Cabin in Albany (which I'm impressed has received a Congressional Recognition from Barbara Lee - excellent taste, Barbara Lee eats for me!) & discussing the many differences between English newspapers & American newspapers. We were complaining about the smarmy style in many San Francisco Chronicle articles, coupled with such a dry taste in headlines - there's never any wit or levity, nothing grabbing you to the article, it's usually just an awkwardly worded statement of fact. I opened to a random page, & stumbled over the following headline:

DELAYS PLAGUE POLICE DISCIPLINE PROGRESS

I tried reading it three different ways & still couldn't make sense of it. The problem is, every single word can be either a noun or a verb! That's five for five, surely a record (at least for headlines). And a few words can be adjectives too. We tried punctuating it a variety of ways to conjure other implications:

DELAYS, PLAGUE POLICE: DISCIPLINE PROGRESS

DELAYS PLAGUE, POLICE DISCIPLINE: PROGRESS

&c. Any of those articles are sure to be more interesting than the original. Mr Gaskin tells us about the quest to make a sentence entirely from the word buffalo, which can be an adjective (buffalo gals), noun (tantanka), verb (outwit or to pistol-whip?) & a few other things. Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo!