Written by Bob Maschi   

Happy Birthday to… Them
Bob Maschi


As most of us have heard, several years ago a company called Warner/Chappell Music acquired the rights to the popular Happy Birthday song and promised to make anyone they caught singing it pay for that privilege. This, of course, outraged many 3-year-olds and others who enjoy ritual but dislike imagination.

Lawsuits were filed against the company and recently the case reached a conclusion with a judge determining that the song should be in the public domain for everybody to enjoy (or, more accurately, for everyone to wince at – even more so when I am the one singing it).

But this brings up an important issue involving the current state of power in the United States. It was not ‘We the People’ who brought Warner/Chappell Music to court, but the likes of major movie studios and others who really didn’t want to pay millions of dollars a year to use the silly ditty.

What this again proves is that the common people in America can only ‘win’ by accident. When, by coincidence, powerful corporations and other wealthy groups share our concerns – albeit for different reasons. Had movie studios and others not pursued this case the copyright would have certainly remained in place at the expense of children’s and office parties everywhere.

Now this is important for us all to understand and to remember when we hear of ‘good’ news from the corporate-controlled media: The average American can no longer expect political, economic or even common-sense justice in this country unless major corporations and a faction of the wealthy, in pursuit of their own insatiable greed, side with us. When such a posturing doesn’t occur to our benefit, we lose.

The façade of American democracy is not only dead, it’s long been buried in an unmarked, pauper’s grave.