Joke of the Day (Jon Stewart, on ‘The Will of the People’)

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: It wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena." — Comic Jon Stewart, quoted by Mark Dawidziak and Ted Crow, “Jon Stewart Blurs the Lines Between Jester and Journalist,” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 11, 2009

For my younger readers (both of them!) and for older ones who’ve blessedly expunged certain trends from their memory, the Macarena was a dance sparked by a pop hit of 1993. Delegates even went wild for it at the 1996 Democratic Convention, believe it or not.

These days, a dance associated with politics dates from further back—the late Seventies hit “YMCA”—and the person moving improbably to it these days began segueing into the public consciousness in that decade, too.