With tongue in cheek
Recently, while searching online for an old column I had lost to a computer hard drive crash, I stumbled upon a rebuttal, published on Facebook, to a different column. The column is called “The times they are a’ changeling,” and it appeared in the Observer-Reporter in 2018. I wrote that column in response to Donald Trump’s exaggerated, oh-so-scary-’round-the-campfire tale of “migrant caravans,” supposedly composed of criminals, on their way from Latin America to undermine life in the United States. Here is a portion of a Trump speech in November of that year:
“At this very moment, large, well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion.”
Statements like this are pure demagoguery. They play to the politician’s political base by demonizing anyone who does not look like you, think like you or speak your language, by stoking fear of the unknown to drive voters to the polls and to support policies that might otherwise be thought extreme. This tactic worked in 1939 Germany. And, sadly, it works in 2025 America; two words prove it: “Los Angeles.”
When I started writing newspaper columns back in the 1990s I hit upon the device of parodying what I consider to be ridiculous or offensive statements by politicians by writing what appears to be something similar. I hope that most readers will see the virtual tongue firmly planted in my virtual cheek. But they don’t always.
In the “Changeling” column I posed as a supporter of the “criminal migrant caravan” theory. But I took the theory further — several steps further, into the Twilight Zone, even. My migrant caravan was composed of “changelings.” The literature of many cultures is rife with changelings — substitutes left by supernatural or mythical creatures, such as fairies, in place of human children they had kidnapped. I wrote in what I thought was the most blatantly absurd way possible. Here’s an excerpt:
“Beware the changeling convoy advancing on America! Organized and financed by oligarchs, [the caravan] is composed mostly of the ‘lovers, muggers and thieves first mentioned by the Standells in their 1966 hit, Dirty Water.’ And once the convoy reaches our shores, changelings will be handed U.S. citizenship, welfare … and maybe even tickets to see ‘Hamilton.'”
Seems obviously outlandish, right? But not to the reader who had written the Facebook rebuttal.
You see, this reader was Larry Tamblyn, the lead singer of the Standells.
Even in this internet age, I never imagined that Tamblyn, living in Boston, would read that column. His rebuttal was lucid and well-reasoned. Here is a bit of it:
“I take exception to your use [of] our song ‘Dirty Water’ to embellish your right-wing, racist rant. For someone heartless enough to rage against poor and impoverished people who are escaping every imaginable horror, whose only hope is to be free, you clearly display your lack of humanity.”
Tamblyn had not, obviously, seen my virtual tongue.
I felt compelled to write back, even after almost seven years, so I sent a message through Facebook. I didn’t chastise Tamblyn, but I did point out that I thought my inclusion of marauding fairies and other obviously ridiculous assertions — that fairies had caused the Civil War, for one — would have made it plain that my column was satiric. I told him I was sorry that he had been offended, but that I wasn’t sorry I had written the column.
Tamblyn responded with, “No offense taken.” Then he died a week later. I don’t think my non-apology killed him.
Humor isn’t a universal language. I know that. But the fact that Tamblyn took the “changeling” column seriously tells me that I had successfully appropriated the style that Trump so often uses. And it should tell you all you need to know about the power of demagoguery, of appealing to the “worse angels of our nature.”
It should tell you a lot about the current state of America.
On this, there is no virtual tongue in my virtual cheek.