OH LAWD I laughed so much during the film without meaning to! My cousin and her friends commented on EVERY LITTLE THING I didn’t know whether to scream at them to shut up or pee myself from what they were talking about!
And now I’m trying to find a comic I saw on my dash about a week ago with Gatsby talking to Nick and calling him old sport because I wanna reblog the shiz out of it. lol
Macaroni wigs at the time were extremely fashionable and this led to Macaroni being a contemporary slang for foppishness/fashionable. Doodle meant idiot and Yankee was a term for Colonials. Sooooo basically the rhyme is saying “Americans are such uncivilized dickheads that they could stick a feather in their cap and think themselves fancy.”
… And why was I not taught this in school alongside the years of repetitive American history?
My orchestra is playing this in a suite of patriotic music…?
omg my elementary school choir class sang this.
Eventually it was adopted and used patriotically by America basically as a “haha fuck you guys” to the British officers who previously mocked them with this song. Of course when this occurred and America began using it positively for themselves, it no longer had the same meaning and is still used nowadays as an American song, commonly being taught in schools across the country.