Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?

I was dancing to Nick Lowe's classic "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?" last night, and I realized how much an arrow to the heart a simple rock and roll song can be.

With the Ponzi scheme scandal of major investor Bernard Madoff uncovered this week, along with the laughable graft of an Illinois governor, and the failure of lame duck Republican Senators refusing to bail out a blue collar enterprise after saving thousands of bankers and brokers, in what can only be called class warfare, Lowe's line, which I use as the title to this post, is suddenly right on target.

Lowe wrote the song years before it ever became a "hit" for Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Lowe was in a pub rock band called Brinsley Schwarz, and already had a penchant for writing love songs with his tongue planted firmly in cheek. By the time Costello and Lowe recorded the single for Stiff records, punk musicians in England had firmly rejected all that had become a flaccid vestige of hippie philosophy homogenized into mush by California record companies, and Lowe and Costello's version of the song could have been labeled "ironic." In fact, Costello, Lowe and Stiff conspired to confuse the public by releasing the Costello version as the flip side to Lowe's single, "American Squirm." The confusion worked as Costello is often credited with writing the song, and it has become the anthem with which Costello frequently ends his live shows.

Lowe has always contended that his lyric was written with sincerity, and in the ensuing years, it seems that the song holds a lot more truth than any of our leaders has to offer.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
Theres one thing I wanna know:
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding? ohhhh
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin away, just makes me wanna cry.
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding? ohhhh
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?

So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin away, just makes me wanna cry.
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?