Sick of my take on nursery rhymes yet?

Today we'll only cover one nursery rhyme, but it is a long one.  I was unfamiliar with the second through fifteenth verses, and since I don't really feel like writing a book today, I'll just hit a few of them.  If you want to see the entire rhyme, check it out here.

Old Mother Hubbard

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard,
To give her poor dog a bone:
When she came there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.

This story serves as the basis for Medicaid, welfare, social security, and most other social programs in the United States.  People were in an uproar when they heard the poor woman was too poor to even feed her dog.  The reason this first verse is the only one most people have heard is because as you continue to read, you quickly find other disturbing aspects in her life, and in the life of her dog.  Therefore, politicians used just the first verse to gain public support of their initiatives and attempted to destroy the rest of the story.

Let's continue on just a bit.

She went to the baker's
To buy him some bread;
When she came back
The dog was dead.

Many scholars believe the woman was of Russian heritage.  She was forced to wait so long in lines for the basics, such as bread and cheese, that her dog starved to death while she was gone.

As the story unfolds, the truth comes out.  We find out the dog did not actually die.  He laughed at her when she came home from the undertaker's, so he obviously had a good sense of humor.  He smokes a pipe, sends her out for beer, white and red wine, fruit, a new jacket, a hat - followed shortly by a wig - so we really don't know why he wanted the hat - shoes, linen, and a hose.

Since the translation is a little questionable, for all we know he may have sent her out not for hose, but for hos (not of the garden variety) - aka bitches, as in female dogs.  She was his personal pimp!

We soon realize the dog had some amazing talents.  Listed among those we are told of are the ability to: sit in a chair; stand on his head; play the flute; ride a goat; feed the cat; dance a jig; read; spin - which I assume means to make clothing and not ride a stationary bike as a workout; and cross dress.

We'll never know the full extent of his abilities.

The story closes as such:

This wonderful dog
Was Dame Hubbard's delight,
He could read, he could dance,
He could sing, he could write;
She gave him rich dainties
Whenever he fed,
And erected a monument
When he was dead.

Now you can see why nobody trusts a politician.  They use part of a story to scare people into going along with them to get what they want.  She fed him whatever he wanted, was at his beck and call to get him anything he desired, and had enough money to memorialize him when he died!!

I fail to see how a woman with such obvious means deserved any assistance from our government or from our taxes.  That, my friends, is a classic example of how people take advantage of the system.

Sad.