Update: A new ver­sion is up.

Murky Thoughts remix­es Strange fruit:

Kansas schools bear strange fruit
Psalms in sci­ence, Dar­win yanked from the root
Gen­e­sis lessons in biol­o­gy
Strange fruit com­ing from democracy

Enlight­ened scene of the mod­ern West
The stick­ered books and the scrip­ture test
Bust of Ben Franklin keen and free
And the sud­den sense of Khomeini

Here is fruit for preach­ers to pluck
For pun­dits to gath­er, for zealots to suck
For TV to rot, for high school to drop
Here is a strange and bit­ter crop

And of course, the orig­i­nal.

One of the most haunt­ing songs ever written

Blood on the leaves and blood on the root
Black bod­ies swing­ing from the poplar trees.

This would be hyper­bole if the anti-sci­ence trends did­n’t so direct­ly threat­en the safe­ty and lives of so many chil­dren. It isn’t about evo­lu­tion alone, it’s about sex ed, it’s about avoid­ing dan­ger­ous alter­na­tive med­i­cines. It’s about liv­ing the life of a think­ing person.

“Strange Fruit” by Bil­lie Hol­i­day from the album Ken Burns Jazz: Bil­lie Hol­i­day (1939, 3:17).