Assume the position with Mr. Wuhl

　　The first part of the series debuted in 2006. In this edition Wuhl "Assumes the Position" that History is Pop Culture. He discusses topics such as the real story behind Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, first sentence of th...展开e U.S. Constitution being a "grammatical fuck-up", and how he believes that "star fucking," or the phenomenon of the U.S. public becoming infatuated with celebrity figures, and "gay battle cries" are "as American as apple pie." To his point about gay battle cries, he cites the rock band Queen's recording of "We Will Rock You," with its powerful, stomp-stomp-clap beat often pounded and sung in unison by crowds at U.S. sports stadiums, as a late 20th century example (lead vocalist Freddie Mercury was gay) and the U.S. patriotic song "Yankee Doodle" as an example from the American Revolution. "Yankee Doodle," Wuhl said, was actually a British song mocking what they saw as disheveled, disorganized American colonial soldiers -- but the colonists didn't realize they were being made fun of ("Doodle" meant "simpleton") and proudly adopted the song because they liked the tune. Indeed, the line "He stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" was a reference to excessively dressed effeminate 18th century British men who spoke with outlandish, epicene affectations and were derided in England as macaronis, Wuhl said. The song's meaning, he said, was that the simple colonists were so foolish that they didn't even know how to become macaronis -- all they did was stick a feather in their cap!