“Fortunate Son” -- Creedence Clearwater Revival (John Fogerty, Composer)
The 1956 Republican Convention was a fairly bland affair in most respects, nominating the incumbent team of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon as the GOP standard bearers. The only bump in the proceedings occurred when the death rattle of a abortive “Dump Nixon” drive manifested itself in the form of the notoriously fickle Terry Carpenter, a lifelong political droll who would incredibly change parties no less than five times over the course of his long career. As a delegate from Nebraska, Carpenter generated some slight confusion by nominating an unascertained “Joe Smith” as the party’s candidate for vice-president. Convention Chair Joseph Martin ignored Carpenter’s jest, and the Eisenhower/Nixon ticket advanced to the general election and then another four years in the White House.
Oddly and unexpectedly, the 1956 Republican Convention would strangely would leave an impact in a most unpredictable place. Even as Republican delegates inside San Mateo County’s Cow Palace selected their party’s nominees for the upcoming election, a new genre of music, “Rock and Roll” was winning the approval of their children and grandchildren. Two of those youngsters, David Eisenhower -- beloved grandson of the president and Julie Nixon, devoted daughter of the vice-president -- met for the first time at the convention. Eighteen years later, the two would wed in a ceremony that would inspire one of rock music’s most enduring political protest anthems.
David began his courtship of Julie in 1967 at the urging of his grandmother Mamie. At the time, he was a student at Amherst while his perspective inamorata attended Smith College a scant seven miles away. Both were 19-years-old at the time, attractive and intelligent. Their wedding the following year at New York’s historic Marble Collegiate Church amid adornments of red and white poinsettias while feted by the nation’s elite was the stuff of fairytales.
News Footage of the Happy Couple
Before and After Their Nuptials
But 1968 did not seem so idyllic to millions of Americans from David and Julie’s generation. The Vietnam War had entered its deadliest phase, the counterculture raged, and student protests shut down campuses. Among the disaffected youth of that era was singer/songwriter John Fogerty. When David met Julie for the first time in 1956 at the Cow Palace, John attended school only a short distance away. Already alienated by a nation too lax on protecting the civil rights of minorities, too indifferent to the plight of its poor, and too eager to send its young men off to war, John saw in the young couple the exemplification of all that was perverse and rotten with the political system against which he raged. A governing elite pursued corrupt and immoral policies damning the children of others to discrimination, poverty, or even death in some pointless war while their own children -- “fortunate sons” -- remained safely isolated from the costs. His anger, spiked by the marriage of two such protected offspring, inspired him to compose one of the most famous protest songs to emerge from the turbulent 1960s.
“Fortunate Son” -- Creedence Clearwater Revival (John Fogerty, Composer)
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no
Yeah, yeah
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer, "More! More! More! Y'all"
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no
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