Well, there’s a lot going on, and it can be easy to forget, but it was just about a week ago that it seemed like the United States was on the precipice of war with Iran. After several days of Iran trading attacks with Israel, the US entered the conflict by dropping bombs on Iranian nuclear weapon sites. Shortly afterward, President Trump announced a ceasefire in the conflict, which, for now, seems to be holding.
The brief but intense incident prompted plenty of reconsideration of previous periods of tension between the two countries — including one of the most embarrassing moments in the second presidential campaign of former Arizona Senator John McCain. The whole thing started when McCain sang a parody of the Beach Boys song, “Barbara Ann.” It was April 2007, and McCain was taking questions from voters in South Carolina.
Vulture writer Hershal Pandya wrote about this and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
HERSHAL PANDYA: He fielded a question from a member of the audience about Iran, and the attendee wanted to ask him. When will we send an error message to the real problem in the Middle East? McCain responds by launching into an impromptu song.
JOHN MCCAIN: You know that old Beach Boys song, “Bomb Iran”? Bomb, bomb, bomb … anyway.
PANDYA: And there was a time when if you searched John McCain on YouTube, this was the number one hit, was him singing this parody song.
SAM DINGMAN: I think I remember seeing it maybe on “The Daily Show” or something like that. But my memory at the time is that the way it was portrayed by people who were commenting on it was John McCain is just kind of making up this song off the top of his head. But what I learned from your piece is that that’s not what was happening.
PANDYA: Yeah. It is funny to think that everyone seemed to think that John McCain had sort of freestyled a Weird Al Yankovic song about violence in the Middle East, as opposed to just referencing an already existing thing. But yes.
So that song has had a long lineage in American culture, starting in 1979 with the Iran hostage crisis. And for those who aren’t familiar, basically what had happened was a group of students in Iran had stormed the embassy in Tehran, the American embassy, and they had taken 66 Americans captive.
This was in response to America giving asylum to the recently deposed Shah, who had had a terrible human rights record in Iran. And so Iran asked for America to extradite the Shah so that they could face justice in Iran. And Americans weren’t having any of it. They immediately started calling for military intervention in Iran.
And eventually it didn’t take very long, actually. One of those calls, the violence, found its way into a parody song.
(“Bomb Iran” by the Baritone Dwarves plays)
DINGMAN: As I understand from your piece, there were several different versions of the song.
PANDYA: Yes. Correct. So the first version was by a group called the Baritone Dwarves in Boston. There was a version by a group called the Skuddzies.
(“Bomb Iran” by the Skuddzies plays)
PANDYA: There was a version by a group called JC & the B-1 Bombers.
(“Bomb Iran” by the JC & the B-1 Bombers plays)
PANDYA: But the most popular version, the one that we all know by a group called Vince Vance & the Valiants.
(“Bomb Iran” by the Vince Vance & the Valiants plays)
VINCE VANCE & THE VALIANTS: Old Uncle Sam’s getting pretty hot. Time to turn Iran into a parking lot. Bomb Iran!
PANDYA: And it’s not clear whether they’re all just plagiarizing each other or they all came to this idea originally. But I think the popularity of it speaks to sort of the anger in America at the time. This song became an outlet for those feelings.
And it’s also like maddeningly catchy, right? If you hear the song, it really burrows its way into your head. And it launders these calls to violence in these repetitive doo-wop harmonies, where like a barbershop quartet is singing about bombing Iran. And it really makes this start to feel like a really normal thing.
DINGMAN: And the other thing that your piece points out is that before John McCain revived this parody song in 2007, it had actually resurfaced a couple times in the 1990s.
PANDYA: Yeah. So actually the song kind of traces the legacy of U.S.-Iran relations over the last 40 years. Every time tensions become inflamed, people start singing the song again. And even during the Gulf War in the ’90s, a bunch of people playing the song changed the lyrics to be about bombing Iraq. For example, Rush Limbaugh being one of them.
So the song has always sort of been around, kind of floating in the zeitgeist.
DINGMAN: And we all know, obviously, that Sen. McCain did not win the presidential election in 2008. How much does it seem like this early viral gaffe cost him? It was a big enough deal that it ended up coming up in two of the presidential debates that cycle between Sen. McCain and Barack Obama.
BARACK OBAMA: John, I you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say. But, you know, coming from you, you know, in the past that threatened extinction for North Korea and, you know, sung songs about bombing Iran, I don’t know, you know, how credible that is.
PANDYA: I think coming out of a time when Americans were understandably frustrated with the wars in the Middle East not yielding results that they were looking for, I think that was a pretty tough hit on McCain’s credibility. But I will say, Sen. McCain never backed down from this comment.
So he was once asked in an interview if he was proud of having sung the song, and he said, “Listen, I was at a campaign event with veterans. When I get together with other veterans, I joke around. If you can’t take a joke, you should just learn to lighten up.”
DINGMAN: Very John McCain.
PANDYA: Also there’s a very direct line to the way people talk about these things now, too. You know what I mean?
DINGMAN: Yes. Well, absolutely. That’s the other thing that’s really fascinating about your piece is that fast-forwarding ahead to 2025, this song is still in the zeitgeist.
PANDYA: Yeah. Unfortunately, as we’re all familiar with now, Israel began a bombing campaign in Iran on June 12. And very soon after that, a family in Israel was singing the song on a balcony — like a mother, father and a young child.
ISRAELI SINGERS: Bomb Iran. If you’re messing with the Jews, you’re always gonna lose. It’s God’s plan. …
PANDYA: That video immediately went very viral on the internet. And just few days after that, after, the U.S. joined in on Israel’s bombing campaign. Donald Trump actually posted a video on Truth Social of, a bunch of warplanes ominously soaring through the sky and then the soundtrack to that video was, of course, “Bomb Iran.”
DINGMAN: So, Hershel, you mentioned a moment ago that the tone of Sen. McCain’s answer, when he was asked about it many years later — basically “either take the joke or shut up” — is resonant for you in terms of political discourse these days. Tell me more about what you mean by that.
PANDYA: Yeah. I mean, I think politicians are always using “humor” to launder often very terrible rhetoric and very violent rhetoric. And then they always kind of say, “I was kidding.” I mean, this is a classic move from the Trump playbook.
DINGMAN: We’re talking on a day when President Trump is in Florida to tour this detention facility that Florida has built to house migrants that the administration wants to deport. And he has branded this facility Alligator Alcatraz.
It strikes me — I hadn’t thought about this until you said that — that the idea of the original Alcatraz is that it was supposed to be one of the scariest prisons. And the idea of calling it Alligator Alcatraz, I guess you could argue that that’s an intentional attempt to soften the reality of what is going to ostensibly happen at that facility.
PANDYA: Yeah, absolutely. I think like these little nicknames he gives things that are ostensibly meant to be humorous, have that effect a lot of the times. And we buy into it because we say these things half ironically, of being like, “Oh, it is kind of funny, but it’s not funny in the way he thinks it’s funny.” But then we are still repeating these things and then and then normalizing their usage in the discourse.
DINGMAN: I have to say, Herschel, I did not expect that we were going to come into this conversation and talk about how it is possible that John McCain helped lay the groundwork for the success of President Trump’s messaging, which is particularly ironic because, famously, there was so much rancor between the two of them.
PANDYA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what was it he said about John McCain? “I like people who weren’t captured.”
DINGMAN: That is what he said. And it seems like he thought it was funny when he said it.
PANDYA: But yeah, I think it is interesting to see the direct through line between the way politicians of that time would use humor in the way Donald Trump uses it now.
DONALD TRUMP: And they were seriously — they were actually crocodiles. They were crocodiles from Africa. They are a step beyond. But no, that was really meant as a joke, but a lot of people liked it, and a lot of people think we should do it, frankly.
