We Didn't Start The Fire ~ 1950 ~ Richard Nixon

We Didn't Start The Fire

sung by: Billy Joel

 

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye,"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen,

 Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye!

 

Chorus:

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

 

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev,
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez.

Chorus

 

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide, Oh-oh-oh.

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo.

Chorus

 

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Chorus

 

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shore,

 China's under martial law, Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore.

 

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire...

 

 

1950

Richard Nixon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Before the presidency and before the scandals of Watergate, Nixon in the 1950's was just starting to get his political career started.  This is where Nixon enters the stage of American history.

 

     Richard Milhous Nixon was born on a farm on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California and was the second of five boys born into the family.  Each of his brothers, including himself, was named after a king in England.  He was named after Richard the Lionheart.  They had Quaker faith upbringing.  In high school he discovered he was a great debater.  His teacher once told him, "Remember, speaking is conversation ... don't shout at people. Talk to them. Converse with them" and that helped boost his debate skills.  After the Pearl Harbor attack he left his law practice to help out in the war and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the navy.  By the time the war was over he was ranked lieutenant commander. 

 

     After the war a friend of his suggested he enter politics and that the committee of California Republicans needed a congressional candidate.  The committee ended up backing him against Jerry Voorhis who was the Democratic representative from California's Twelfth District for the past ten years.  He won that campaign.  He became one of the youngest members of he Republican controlled Eightieth Congress. 

 

     In 1950 Nixon ran for the United States Senate against Democratic Congresswomen

Helen Douglas.  At this time American's were on a communist scare and Nixon pointed out that Douglas supported communist policy.  He ended up carrying 53 out of the 58 counties in California and won with over 700,000 votes.  The campaign became known as Pink Lady vs. Tricky Dick.  Nixon, being 37 years old at this time, became the youngest Republican U.S. Senator at this time. 

     Greg Mitchell wrote a book about this election called Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady : Richard Nixon vs Helen Gahagan Douglas-Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950. 

 

     In 1952 Eisenhower took notice of Nixon and asked him to be his vice-president running mate.  They won that election in 1952 and Richard Nixon became vice-president for 2 terms for the 34th president serving from 1953 to 1961.  He later on went and became the 37th president from 1969 to 1974 when he resigned from office.