Life validating old Tom Lehrer joke

By J. Thomas Duffy

When the flock starts fleeing, if you're the Christian Scientists, you yell "Wait!";

Christian Science Church Seeks Truce on Medicine

Since the founding of their church 131 years ago, Christian Scientists have been taught to avoid doctors at all cost. It is a conviction rooted so deeply in church dogma that dozens of members have gone to jail rather than surrender an ailing person to what they see as the quackery of medical science.

But faced with dwindling membership and blows to their church’s reputation caused by its intransigence concerning medical treatment, even for children with grave illnesses, Christian Science leaders have recently found a new tolerance for medical care. For more than a year, leaders say, they have been encouraging members to see a physician if they feel it is necessary.

When we espied this article today, our thoughts went, immediately, in nano-nano seconds, to the great satirist, Tom Lehrer, his album ''That Was the Year That Was', and his tune "Send In The Marines".

On the album, Lehrer intro's the song with this;

What with President Johnson practicing escalatio on the Vietnamese and then the Dominican crisis on top of that it has been a nervous year and people have begun to feel like a Christian scientist with appendicitis. Fortunately in times of crisis just like this America always has this number one instrument of diplomacy to fall back on. Here's a song about it.

No more, apparently, will a Christian Scientist have to gut out appendicitis.

Though, I am confident, Lehrer still would have managed to come up with, and squeeze in, a Christian Scientist joke to any number of tunes.

Here, by the way, is "Send In The Marines";

Tom Lehrer - Send the Marines - with intro - widescreen - now on DVD







(Cross Posted at The Garlic)