# Can anyone explain Tom Lehrer's Stanleyville reference?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-explain-tom-lehrers-stanleyville-reference/75790>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 11, 2001, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-explain-tom-lehrers-stanleyville-reference/75790 "2001-08-11T12:16:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2014, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-explain-tom-lehrers-stanleyville-reference/75790/41 "2014-07-05T08:47:57Z")

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> [@Suicide](#):
>
> craziest thing about that album is that many of the issues he sung about are still issues today: . . .

> [@Voyager](#):
>
> Hell, the stuff he wrote when he was a student, on the first album, is still funny and pretty advanced today. . .

Yes, but with regard to the premise of the humor behind this particular song he was off the mark. Germany seems to have more or less behaved itself in the half century since the song was written.

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2014, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-explain-tom-lehrers-stanleyville-reference/75790/42 "2014-07-05T10:22:08Z")

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Robot Arm, I mentioned in post #24 that he lives half the year in Cambridge. The first link I give there talks about where he lives. The following links also talk about him living in Cambridge. The last one says more specifically that he lives in a small apartment near Harvard Square. Perhaps he doesn’t spend a lot of time walking the streets and going into coffee shops:

[http://www.paul-lehrman.com/insider/1997/12insiderfulltext.html](http://www.paul-lehrman.com/insider/1997/12insiderfulltext.html)

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1947#more-1947](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1947#more-1947)

> **[That Was The Lunch That Was](http://blogarhythmz.blogspot.com/2012/02/that-was-lunch-that-was.html)**
>
> If you were a nerd growing up in the 60s, you lived in worship of Tom Lehrer, the Harvard mathematician who rolled his love of musical theat...

> **[Seriously Funny](https://books.google.com/books?id=45tG8jqrx5oC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=%22Tom%2BLehrer%22%2BCambridge%2B%22lives%2Bin%22&source=bl&ots=gppQtwSs5E&sig=vqWWeB6fii4361vYpdD9l7vIoXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VM-3U5yTFtCTqgaV8oLYCg&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22Tom%20Lehrer%22%20Cambridge%20%22lives%20in%22&f=false)**
>
> The comedians of the 1950s and 1960s were a totally different breed of relevant, revolutionary performer from any that came before or after, comics whose humor did much more than pry guffaws out of audiences. Gerald Nachman presents the stories of...

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**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2014, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-explain-tom-lehrers-stanleyville-reference/75790/43 "2014-07-05T10:33:12Z")

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I believe the same conflict [as referenced here…](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV3ksMAtvok)

Long live Roland.

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