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OftheSorrowfulFace t1_j9rx1bu wrote

The point being that a feather wasn't 'macaroni', so it's basically saying 'this guy was so dumb he thought a feather he found on the floor was high fashion'.

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UnimpressedWithAll t1_j9sgrvg wrote

Isn’t it just that eras version of “pretty fly for a white guy”

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TWiesengrund t1_j9t0hre wrote

And all the dames say I'm pretty maccaroni for a war of independence guy!

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PepeHacker t1_j9tajpa wrote

Give it to me Yankee uh huh uh huh Give it to me Yankee uh huh uh huh Give it to me Yankee uh huh uh huh And all the girlies say I'm pretty fly for a white guy…

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Thrilling1031 t1_j9trnvx wrote

Macaroni was from the rich dudes going to Italy and being super impressed by everything, especially pasta and MACARONI, wanting to be cool the wealthy from England appropriated the word as they do, and then used their silly word to make a silly song about the colonialist, who loved the song and made it their fuckin anthem. Full circle appropriation.

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dotnetdotcom t1_j9tnyq8 wrote

"Doodle" meant something like goofy. It's also where "dude" came from. "Dandy" meant a poof or fancypants.

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MagicCripple t1_j9rvz7p wrote

....So I Tied An Onion To My Belt, Which Was The Style At The Time...

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backupKDC6794 t1_j9s1qof wrote

I saw a Tumblr post comparing it to writing a G on your belt and calling it Gucci.

Then someone rewrote Yankee Doodle Dandy as

"US moron went to town

Hunting for some coochie

Wrote a G up on his belt

And this bitch called it Gucci"

and I've always wanted someone to fully rewrite Yankee Doodle Dandy in a modern rap style ever since then

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jrhooo t1_j9sb920 wrote

I mean, the riding on a pony line is relevant too.

Riding on a pony with a feather in his cap seems like

Everybody in the upper strata is buying Maybachs and Rolls Royce,

Fuckin Colonial rides into town in a rented Chrysler 300 200

Stuck a diamond rhinestone hat pin in his baseball cap and thinks he's all red carpet ready

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Stswivvinsdayalready t1_j9uxopo wrote

There's an emasculation aspect too. Riding a pony is for children and women, or maybe a fancy riding pony might be good for a walk in the park. Not a fit mount for a man of war.

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SavageComic t1_j9tittk wrote

This is basically Hamilton. You'll have white theatre people jizzing forever.

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MrFartyBottom t1_j9s2o8a wrote

I think we need to bring it back. That's macaroni.

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Elvis_Pissley t1_j9t43f0 wrote

That would be so macaroni.

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theAusterityClinic t1_j9rwy3t wrote

Macaroni wasn’t slang for fashionable it was a specific style with puffy clothes and makeup and big wigs (think pre Revolution France)

Source: I have a cooking channel on YouTube so I know macaroni.

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minnesotaris t1_j9s3p4w wrote

But why was the word macaroni used like this, especially in the context of calling pasta macaroni both at-large and sometimes a specific type of pasta?

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sabersquirl t1_j9s3ypy wrote

Did you read the page that this post is about? Did you even look?

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Judge_Rhinohold t1_j9s3dyk wrote

So today Yankee Doodle would stick a feather in his cap and call it sick?

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eggsssssssss t1_j9sbu34 wrote

“Ooh i got the dripppp”

(He did not, in fact, have the drip)

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Kurtotall t1_j9ryi6w wrote

Yankee Doodle was originally an insult. Till we flipped the script and owned that shit…and won.

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Bruce-7891 t1_j9rxhvy wrote

My threads on fleek - Yankee Doodle

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Pallidus127 t1_j9tvojv wrote

Yankee Doodle, stop trying to make ‘macaroni’ happen! It’s not going to happen!

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jugglervr t1_j9um7aa wrote

A man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful girl on his arm.

The show begins and the comedian comes out for his first show of the evening.

The comedian says "A man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful girl on his arm.

The show begins and the comedian comes out for his second show of the evening..

The show begins and the comedian says "A man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful girl on his arm".

Just then a man in the front row stands up and says "I think I've heard this before".

The comedian says "Well maybe you caught my first show of the evening".

The man says "No, I just walked in here".

The comedian says "Well it was a guy looked just like you walked in with a beautiful girl on his arm could have been your twin brother".

The man says "My twin brother's dead".

The comedian says "What is this, a wake?".

The man says "I don't have to stand for this".

And he stands up and he walks outside.

And the comedian says "Are you out there? I can hear you breathing.".

The man says "I'm holding my breath".

The comedian says "Well I'm holding you wife".

Just then the man says "That's not my wife".

And he walks back into the nightclub with another beautiful girl on his arm.

"Who's that lady I'm seeing you with" the comedian says.

The man says "This is my wife. That other lady is my dead twin brother's wife.

You can take her if you want her".

And the comedian says "Not unless you say please".

Just then, a man walks into a nightclub with a tatoo of a beautiful girl on his arm eating elbow macaroni..

The comedian says "Is that girl from Italy?".

The man says "No just hungry".

Just then a man walks into the nightclub, he comes riding into the nightclub, on a pony, with a feather stuck into his hat.

"What do you call that?" the comedian asks.

"An entrance" the man says "But forget that".

Just give me a beer and give my pony a jockey".

The bartender says "I think that pony's had enough already".

"Well make it a short jockey" the man says.

"And while you're at it give that lady's lawyer some briefs".

The lady stands up and says "I can defend myself, your Honor".

And the lawyer says "But I'll defend her honor, your Honor".

The judge says "Well on her or off her, make up your mind".

The comic says "Definitely on her, that's the best offer I've had all day".

"Well take it or leave it" says the Judge.

"Couldn't we just drop it?" says the comedian.

He says "You better drop leaflets before you bomb".

And the comedian says "I'm already bombing".

He says "Maybe it's your material".

He says "You don't think it fits?".

He says "Well it could be let out a little".

The comedian says "How much do you think it will cost me?".

He says "It'll cost you an arm and a leg".

The comic says "Well listen, could you put it on the cuff?".

The tailor says "I'll tell you what I'll do. We'll forget the leg and I'll just charge you an arm".

And a beautiful arm it is.

"OK" says the comedian and the tailor cuts off the comedian's arm and gives him the suit.

The tailor calls his girlfriend and asks her to go out on the town with him in order to celebrate.

He calls on his girlfriend and gives her the beautiful arm as a gift.

She wears it around her neck just like a stole and they go out on the town.

The man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful arm on his girl.

The show begins and the one-armed comedian comes out for his last show of the evening..

He does his act, and the audience stands up and gives him a hand

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TWiesengrund t1_j9t0d8l wrote

That's such a maccaroni fun fact!

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LazerWolfe53 t1_j9t5w6u wrote

'stuck a feather in his cap and called it the shit'

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Died5Times t1_j9t9sz1 wrote

The song was created to make fun of americans who didnt understand the culture, but americans “took it back”

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fredsam25 t1_j9tbmzf wrote

That's hella pasta, yo!

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cpsbstmf t1_j9tbo1a wrote

i remember being very confused about this as a kid. I just figured he had mental illness

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ChadJones72 t1_j9tjbbo wrote

I'm just saying if we all start saying this ironically at first we can bring this phrase back if we want.

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OkSpirit452 t1_j9tmm8x wrote

Man that Michael Jordan is so macaroni

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ElGuano t1_j9u7lm4 wrote

So I think a modern translation is "Yankee Doodle drove to town in his lowered Kia Elantra, put on some fake Ray Ban aviators, and said to himself "Man, I am babe magnet."

Since I think the song was originally sung by Brits making fun of local yokel colonists.

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Eastern_Director_506 t1_j9vcbvk wrote

Crazy to think that “Dude” is the abbreviated form of Yankee Doodle. It feels so far removed from its origin.

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Little-Variation8268 t1_j9sxcbk wrote

I've always known my meals are fashionable and trendy. First macaroni, then chicken nuggets. Living the dream here folks :)

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Slurm818 t1_j9tj23m wrote

I thought that macaroni was a high end hat making company and Yankee Doodle was just being a buffoon

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Lothran t1_j9tm1jq wrote

It was the Macaroni Club, which was a club for dandy aristocrats at the time. Putting the feather in the hat and calling it macaroni was throwing shade at them.

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grbrit t1_j9u43r9 wrote

I learned that Yankee Doodle was an insult that went over the targets' heads via this video.

The whole thing is definitely worth watching, but the relevant part starts at around 18 minutes in.

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grbrit t1_j9u9045 wrote

Wait... isn't that Zach Braff at 30:33?

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kiwi_8 t1_j9vq948 wrote

Am I the only one who didn’t know Yankee Doodle was a real person?

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sarded t1_j9w6tgu wrote

He's not, he's a song figure.

"Yankee Doodle" = "colonist fool"

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prassuresh t1_j9w4g42 wrote

But why did he call it Hershey’s chocolate when he stuck it up his bum?

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ForthWorldTraveler t1_ja03uo3 wrote

Which is also where the Macaroni Penguin gets its name - it has a conspicuous yellow crest.

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ElfMage83 t1_j9yosfs wrote

Well, yes. This is common knowledge.

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EntropyFighter t1_j9s3sws wrote

Robert Wuhl in his history show "Assume the Position" on HBO like 20 years ago said it was because at the time there was a place called the Macaroni Club that was a gay club. It was a way of calling them gay.

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stray_r t1_j9ska61 wrote

Macaroni was what we would now call a queer identity, growing out of moll house culture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_(fashion)

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elephantsgraveyard OP t1_j9slyoz wrote

Wow what a cool article, sure looks familiar

Joking aside, I wanted to include something about that as well but you can only put so many characters into the title. The whole thing is fascinating!

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stray_r t1_j9sp3hq wrote

Ok, was on mobile, didn't see link destination, didn't click through. Guilty of crimes against the internet.

If we taught history properly in schools, we'd be saying that the british were hurling queerphobic slurs at the colonies and they owned it so hard by running with it and kicking the british empire out.

It's important to note that in 1770, buggery was a capital offence in the british empire. (No it's not a term of affection. If you see british people using it as a term of affection on tv, it's a very british and particularly squaddie behaviour of greeting close friends with vile insults. A millennial equivalent observed in the wild is ||whatup douchenuggets||) We don't get the level of self identity we do where it's legally protected. But there's plenty of homophobic and enbyphobic hate recorded in the 1770s.

I think macaroni was more widely "fashion inspired by" rather than exclusively queer culture, but it's the highly visible Ru Paul's Drag Race to the much more underground queer clubs in every city.

I wish things like this were taught in history classes, people might see the queer community as something that's always been here, rather than something that's "new" due to internet exposure and a period of relative safety in existing publicly in some places.

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RandomPersonOfTheDay t1_j9sve4q wrote

This is one of the most intelligent, thought provoking, and insightful comments I’ve ever read on Reddit. Cheers! 🍻

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hornboggler t1_j9se2c1 wrote

He "stuck" the feather in his hat like planting a flag, because he was claiming macaroni as the official American pasta, wresting it from the control of the eye-talians. And NOWadays, we make it better than they do! So we have done old Mr. Doodle proud, I reckon

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RandomPersonOfTheDay t1_j9svjft wrote

Hahahaha! Real Italians hate Americas version of “Italian” food. You aren’t eating real Italian unless you’ve been to Italy or have a relative that came directly from Italy.

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Antiquemooses t1_j9rrnsv wrote

Yankee doodle was an insult that Americans took back, its like the original n-word

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hyperproliferative t1_j9rtkfi wrote

Not. Even. Close.com

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Antiquemooses t1_j9s6372 wrote

the whole yankee doodle song is an insult

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Ralfarius t1_j9s8gwz wrote

That's... That's not what they're correcting you about...

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Antiquemooses t1_j9s8q1u wrote

but thats how it happened?

https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/story-behind-the-song/the-story-behind-the-song/yankee-doodle/

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