Start the Fire

Upon searching for my next editorial to critique for my writing class, I stumbled onto this little number by New York Time's Opinion Columnist Roger Cohen.  He introduces the piece by saying "With apologies to Billy Joel, who’s more of a chronologist, and in tribute to a president, Barack Hussein Obama, representing a new post-cold-war generation of 21st-century Americans."  The column is less of a column, but more of a statement in my opinion.  It provoked a lot of thought in me and maybe it will do so in you.  But, it left me thinking, what is he really trying to say here?  How is this a tribute?  What do you think?  

We Didn’t Start the Fire

Bill Clinton, Tina Fey, capitalist China, O.J.,
Asia rising, Facebook, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ugg boots, Seinfeld
West Bank, Gaza City, Tupac Amaru Shakur

Mohamed Atta, W.M.D., Harry Potter, Reality TV
Tom Cruise, American Beauty, MP3, Oprah Winfrey

Schwarzenegger, YouTube, America’s got organic food
Armstrong, blogosphere, Monica Lewinsky

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

Vlad Putin, Medvedev, Assad, Posh-and-Becks
The West Wing, Y2K, massacre in Falluja

Britney Spears, Spike Lee, Kurt Cobain, Sarkozy
Mia Hamm, Heath Ledger, Viagra, Napster

Lindsay Lohan, skinny jeans, Boston’s got a winning team
Lehman Brothers, A.I.G., subprime, Ponzi scheme

Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, and a billion poor,
Tehran, Hezbollah, trouble with the jihadis

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

New Orleans, Bolaño, Sarah Palin no-go
TiVo, Hu Jintao, and the vegan-eco crowd

Tony Blair, Paris Hilton, Princess Di, Bin Laden
Pyongyang, the renditions gang, Roger Clemens in a cloud

ACT UP, Infinite Jest, O.J. Part Two, Johnny Depp
iPhones, Federer, Who Let the Dogs Out?

Halle Berry, cloned Dolly, and another Kennedy
Jon Stewart, American Psycho, tsunami, Danger Mouse

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

Sedaris, Unabomber, Girls Gone Wild, Nasrallah
Jay-Z, Shanghai, shock and awe in Baghdad

Amy Winehouse, Imus, gases of the greenhouse
Kelly Ripa, Maureen Dowd, Ted Williams gone mad

Outsourcing, Mumbai, so many didn’t have to die
David Blaine, human rights, and Napoleon Dynamite

Mandela, Madonna’s ex, abstinence, safe sex
Rabin blown away, what else do I have to say?

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

BlackBerry, global mall, Hillary Clinton standing tall
Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, MySpace, The Corrections

Rushdie, Starbucks, Channel Tunnel, Spurlock
American Idol, Black Hawk Down, Miracle on the Hudson

Sopranos, Cougars, Da Vinci Code, life on Mars
Saddam hung, Mugabe, traumatic stress, mission creep

Social networks, match.com, iChat, Amazon,
Terror cells, endless war, 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
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Hawaii, Kenya, Kansas and Jakarta
Harvard, finding God, social work, Axelrod

Red state, blue state, unity can no longer wait,
A time to reap, a time to sow, we will close Guantánamo

Iowa, Yes We Can, McCain was just an also-ran
I Have a Dream, Bush out, a black man in the White House

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 ...