Last updated on March 29, 2017
In 1932, songwriters Sydney Edmund Tolchard Evans, Stanley Damerell, Robert Hargreaves, and Harry Tilsley wrote a silly little ditty that became a hit at the time and has endured in American culture. The song, “Let’s All Sing like the Birdies Sing,” is familiar to anybody who has visited Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room – and possibly found it an annoying earworm for hours after the visit. The lyrics start this way:
Let’s all sing like the birdies sing,
Tweet, tweet tweet, tweet tweet.
In 2017 that song should replace “Hail to the Chief” as the Presidential Anthem. Our new President, who bears a disturbing resemblance to a giant canary, has been tweet, tweet tweet, tweet tweeting his way through his presidency, usually from the bowels of pre-dawn sleeplessness. While that might not be a good way to govern – it isn’t – or an effective way to communicate – it isn’t –tweeting is his favorite mode of expression.
The President may be the most famous American canary since Tweety, an iconic presence in Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The little yellow fellow starred in 47 of them and adults and kids alike could recite his signature line: “I tawt I taw a putty tat. I did! I did!” For some reason Warner Brothers and Mel Blanc thought it endearing to inflict Tweety with a speech impediment, so what he was actually saying was: “I thought I saw a pussy cat. I did! I did!”
What is it about canaries and pussies? Consider and compare the two most famous American canaries:
Tweety Bird: “I thought I saw a pussy cat. I did! I did!”
Tweety Trump: “I thought I’d grab a pussy. I did! I did!”
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