the buzz log

I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill, and I sit here on Capitol Hill.

If those words have triggered an incessant yet pleasurable hum in your brain, you belong to a generation exposed to Atari video games, Shaun Cassidy, jelly sneakers (when they appeared the first time around), and "Schoolhouse Rock."

Musical cartoon shorts or "educational interstitials," the '70s-era "Schoolhouse Rock" comprised enlightened breaks between Scooby Doo adventures and Bugs Bunny reruns, and put topics like multiplication, grammar, and history to a jazzy uptempo or moody folk beat. Culling from that vast repertoire, Disney (which now owns the cartoons) has repackaged an election special DVD this week, to help a new generation get in tune during a presidential year and induce random lyrical outbreaks among older folks.

Oh, we were suffering until suffrage.
Not a woman here could vote no matter what age,
until the 19th Amendment struck down that restrictive rule.
Oh yeah!

As with all seemingly good acts, ABC's motives to air "Schoolhouse" weren't entirely pure: Consumer activists rebelled against the inordinate advertising time on Saturday mornings targeting kids, and the FCC decreed children's programming had to have an educational component (a ruling lifted during the Reagan years).

Oh, elbow room, elbow room,
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the west or bust, in God we trust,
there's a new land out there...

After a long absence, rock versions of the songs were released, Disney bought the franchise, and attempts at a musical have been made. While the math and grammar lessons still hold up, Time magazine's TV blog Tuned In took Tuesday's DVD release to muse about these segments as a post-Watergate "kind of socio-political time capsule," and how they couldn't perhaps be made today.

We're gonna elect a president! (No more kings)
He's gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)
We're gonna run things our way! (No more kings)
Nobody's gonna tell us what to do!

All the more reason to brainwash a new generation, although serious reviews suggest getting the comprehensive 30th Anniversary edition, released in 2002. After all, in any good election year, you also got to know some choice interjections.

Hallelujah. Yea.