The KKK song.

In my junior year at Emerson College, I took a class entitled "Copy Editing and Design." It was a requirement for me as a journalism major. My favorite assignment was the AP Style Book assignment. For those of who don't know, the AP Style Book contains all the stylistic rules used by the Associated Press. It is the most commonly used newspaper style (others include Chicago style and the arcane NYT style, used only by the monster that created it: the New York Times).

We were all assigned a letter from the alphabet. We were then tasked with finding a single entry from the book in our assigned letter, and then giving a short presentation on that entry at the beginning of class. I was given the letter K. With the help of some friends and some mind-altering substances, I came to class prepared to sing a song about the stylistic rules associated with writing about the Ku Klux Klan. My classmate, Brian, accompanied me on guitar. It is an awful, awful, AWFUL song that scans horribly and has no redeeming characteristics:

The KKK Song

Now in these great United States
There are plenty of people who love to hate
But to truly understand them you’ve got to know the rules.
So here’s a little lesson on those KKK fools.

Some of them don’t use the full name
The Ku Klux Klan
But on the second reference you surely can
Just ask that Grand Dragon man.

Now the biggest groups, there are only two.
You can find them in Georgia and Alabama too.
Stone Mountain and Tuscaloosa – what are you?
The home of the KKK – it’s true.

So who makes up this crazy bunch
Who might meet occasionally and go for lunch?
It’s an Imperial Board composed of many guys.
But when you wrote “Imperial Wizard” capitalize the “I”

You can call the members Klansmen, that’s all right.
Obviously they’re all white.
Grand Dragon Dale Rousch is what you ought to say
When writing something on the stupid KKK.