Very Recent History: When Prince Missed "We Are The World"

Apparently a bunch of musicians have re-recorded “We Are The World” to benefit Haiti? I had a ton of thoughts about this last night, particularly about the original recording of “We Are The World,” and how its lyrics seem so the product of a very different era in which we were supremely confident in our strength as a nation, probably because we didn’t realize that we were completely eradicating our manufacturing base and putting ourselves on the remarkably destructive course which has brought us to where we are today. (A related thought: Doesn’t the phrase “the war against the middle class” contain within itself the false suggestion that there has not been an even more brutal “war against the poor”?) But anyway, who the hell wants to hear my disorganized hippie thoughts? Instead, I will give you the benefits of my aged but not yet completely destroyed memory: This “SNL” skit, which came out right around the time of “We Are The World” 1.0, may amuse you, even if many of its cultural references leave you baffled.