For Lindsey Graham, Debbie Reynolds’ “If I had a hammer” (video)

• jake

  you are crazy. no way that’s Ann-Margret.

• Butch1

  It could be. They try and throw a large net when they do this and it usually offends more people unfortunately, than draws them in. Perhaps she was gearing up for a “Los Vegas” act or something.

• Mike_in_the_Tundra

  The dancing, quartet, and the arrangement were really strange, but I couldn’t help thinking that Debbie was doing this in order to spark interest in her movie, “The Singing Nun”. It may have had the opposite effect.

• Mike_in_the_Tundra

  “Oh! To be “one toke over the line” and then watching the Lawrence Welk Show.”

  There’s a definition for cognitive dissonance.

• Mike_in_the_Tundra

  What about natural curiosity? I find it amazing that Welk didn’t ask, “What’s a toke?” I’m certain that some of the musicians had the answer.

• Butch1

  “Oh, my Papa?” ;-

• Butch1

  Welk was clueless when he said, “modern spiritual.” I wonder if anyone in his “band” knew? ;-) ( musicians are usually way ahead of where most everyone else are. )

• Butch1

  How could she ruin that folk song? Some talented singers should just not enter genres that were not meant for them to sing. It’s like listening to some famous opera singers of the past try and sing pop songs. They have wonderful voices in opera, but out of the genre and into the wrong one and it can be a disaster. Getting back to Debbie; ( then putting dancers and a quartet to it . . . whose idea was it anyway? ) Commercialism at its worst.

• woodroad34

  Oh! To be “one toke over the line” and then watching the Lawrence Welk Show. Talk about psychodrama and hallucinations.

  And as far as Miss LGrrrrr goes, republicans always parse and never include whole messages–they’ve never been original and their public can’t grasp whole, 3-d messages. They’ve become political white noise.

• PolinaWellingsiso

  my buddy’s sister makes $87 every hour on the internet
  . She has been unemployed for 6 months but last month her payment was $19402
  just working on the internet for a few hours. go right here M­o­n­e­y­d­u­t­i­e­s­.­C­O­M­

• KelsQualeymit

  my my buddy’s sister makes $87 every hour on the internet
  . She has been unemployed for 6 months but last month her payment was $19402
  just working on the internet for a few hours. go right here M­o­n­e­y­d­u­t­i­e­s­.­C­O­M­sister makes $87 every hour on themy buddy’s sister makes $87 every hour on the internet
  . She has been unemployed for 6 months but last month her payment was $19402
  just working on the internet for a few hours. go right here M­o­n­e­y­d­u­t­i­e­s­.­C­O­M­ internet
  . She has been unemployed for 6 months but last month her payment was $19402
  just working on the internet for a few hours. go right here M­o­n­e­y­d­u­t­i­e­s­.­C­O­M­

• AtticCrazy

  He’s on the list of celebrities with infamously large…talent.

• jm2

  puleez! Debbie would be insulted having her name mentioned in the same phrase as Miss Lindsey. i was impressed with the Italian subtitles though…

• Mike_in_the_Tundra

  It certainly was referring to smoking a joint. In fact, when I was in college, several of us got really high and went to the railway station and sang that song. It was a college town, so no one really noticed us.

  I loved it when Welk referred to it as a modern spiritual.

• Mike F

  Oh, man, my wife showed this to me a couple of weeks ago. HI-larious! Absolutely no clue as to the marijuana reference. Conservatives can be so block-headed, no?

  But anyway, Jeebus.

  Oh, and I likes me that ‘sexy flamenco’ dancer with the B52 and the saucy smile. Grrrr, baby, grrr!

• Wilberforce

  That was brutal. I couldn’t watch more than a minute. And it’s a minute I’ll never get back.

• http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

  I assume they mean toke, as in inhaling a joint? So the song is about getting too high?

• http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

  Yep, mine :) thanks!

• emjayay

  Amazing. Plus color coordinated costume designer country bumpkin outfits. I think they focused on the train and Jesus and the love parts. Stolen from Songfacts:

  This song is about drugs, especially marijuana. A “Toke” is a puff from a marijuana cigarette or pipe. Tom Shipley explained: “When we wrote ‘One Toke Over the Line,’ I think we were one toke over the line. I considered marijuana a sort of a sacrament… If you listen to the lyrics of that song, ‘one toke’ was just a metaphor. It’s a song about excess. Too much of anything will probably kill you.”

  Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley were Folk singers in Los Angeles. This was their only hit.

  Brewer says of the song’s origin: “We wrote that one night in the dressing room of a coffee house. We were literally just entertaining ourselves. The next day we got together to do some picking and said, ‘What was that we were messing with last night?’ We remembered it, and in about an hour, we’d written ‘One Toke Over the Line.’ Just making ourselves laugh, really. We had no idea that it would ever even be considered as a single, because it was just another song to us. Actually Tom and I always thought that our ballads were our forte.” (quotes from brewerandshipley.com)

  Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead was brought in to play played steel guitar on the Tarkio sessions. He didn’t play on “One Toke Over The Line,” but did appear on the B-side, “Oh Mommy’ (I Ain’t No Commie).”

  Some radio stations refused to play this song because of the drug references, but not everyone got this meaning. In 1971 the song was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show by a wholesome looking couple Gail Farrell and Dick Dale, who clearly had NO clue what a toke was. Welk, at the conclusion of the performance of the song, remarked, without any hint of humor, “there you’ve heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale.” Brewer & Shipley heard about the performance and searched for the footage, but didn’t see it until the clip showed up on YouTube in 2007.

• http://parkandbark.wordpress.com/ Houndentenor

  The real question is why either one of them wanted Eddie Fisher. Yuck!

• emjayay

  the (late, lamented) Lollipop Building type set pieces are pretty cool too.

• Yalma Cuder-Zicci

  This video was a goldmine for gifs. They are wonderful. Did you make them, John? The first one is priceless.

• HeartlandLiberal

  Wow. What a total disconnect between the message of the song and the visual representation by the singer and dancers. Reminds me of the Lawrence Welk show, which did a great job of taking songs with serious messages and social content, and reducing them to trite, kitschy rubble, sung by women with big hair and swirling long dresses.

  And then one has to ask, when Welk show did “One Toke Over the Line”m whether they really knew or had any clue what that meant?

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg

• http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

  Honestly? I don’t think there’s a single musical production number from, oh, around 1955 onward that wasn’t incredibly…flamboyant.

• VarshaMoretoniss

  Eva . I can see what your saying… Robert `s comment
  is surprising, last thursday I bought themselves a Infiniti from making $7905
  this – 4 weeks past and-also, ten-k last month . with-out a doubt this is the
  easiest-work Ive ever done . I began this 8-months ago and right away started
  to earn minimum $82 per/hr . official website R­e­x­1­0­.­C­O­M­

• UncleBucky

  Yikes.

• AtticCrazy

  Reason 943 why Eddie Fisher dumped Debbie for Liz. YAWN.

• Indigo

  That hair!

• cole3244

  i can definitely answer half your question, it isn’t the best, i will leave the rest to others.

One-time donation:

Recurring monthly donation:

Donations are not tax-deductible.