Popular Culture
Other references to the WPA in popular culture include:
- WPA Blues, a 1937 song by Casey Bill Weldon, also recorded by Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter: "Everybody's working in this town/ And it's worrying me night and day/If that means working too/ Have to work for the WPA"
- Harper Lee's 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird noted a typical comment. Bob Ewell, the resident slacker of Maycomb County, is described as "the only person fired from the WPA for laziness."
- "I'm Still Here", a song from Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical, Follies: "I've slept in shanties, guest of the WPA, and I'm here."
Read more about this topic: Works Progress Administration
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)