Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

25 Mar 2005, 7:49 a.m.

Cole Porter, Genius

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Did Malcolm X get his "Plymouth Rock landed on us!" line from the eponymous song of Anything Goes?

The line in that song that interchanges wrong and right and day and night reminds me of The Communist Manifesto on the conveniently changing morality of every age. "All that is solid melts into air" would totally fit into Anything Goes except I don't know how to make it fit the meter and rhyme scheme.