America Is Asking You To Buy

 

I had an odd experience this week. I was singing, as I am wont to do, to my toddler grandson. We passed a Chevrolet, so I sang the Dinah Shore jingle from my youth: “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet; America is asking you to buy.”

For the first time ever, I wondered, “Why is it asking you to buy?” I told my daughter who was walking with us that I was sure I could find out on the Internet. She said even the Internet is not that obsessive, and she was right. Although I have had several occasions recently to question my vaunted Google skills, I feel sure there is no analysis of this question, until now.

But along the way I made a slightly chilling discovery. It may be simple; singers sometimes change lyrics when they sing by a word or two. The Internet says the lyric is “America is asking you to call,” which rhymes with “greatest land of all” a line later. But the lyric I remember wouldn’t rhyme; “America is asking you to buy.”

In his book Hacking Reality Rob Nelson describes a quantum universe where we sometimes shift between almost identical timelines. He cites his own experience with slightly differing song lyrics.

If Occam were here, his razor would suggest faulty elderly memory as the more likely cause.

Regardless, there are a dozen people on the Internet who also remember “asking you to buy.” So, come on now. I realize this whole item is ridiculous, and that the jingle was silly, but how the heck could America be asking you to buy a Chevrolet? Was it a subtle dig at the coming wave of foreign car imports? “America is asking you to buy” an American car to save American jobs? Just wondering. Let me know your theory.

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[Robert E Malchman]

"What's good for GM is good for America." -Charles Erwin Wilson, Chairman of General Motors (I paraphrase.)