Who Let The (Blue) Dogs Out? Win A Platinum Record Award!

You remember "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by the Baha Men, right? Even before it was a worldwide super-hit, it was being used at sporting events where people where starting to throw things when Queen songscame on the loudspeakers. Mississippi State started the craze, although the Seattle Mariners and the Mets were soon fighting over who used it as a team anthem first. The Baltimore Ravens claim it helped them make it to the Super Bowl in 2000 and the Finnish ice hockey team, Espoo Blues, still uses it as their goalsong. A lot of hockey teams are drawn to it.

When we first started covering the Blue Dog beat at DWT I had the impression most people thought "Blue Dog" was a kind of descriptive, like "yellow dog," rather than what it is-- a House caucus made up of fiscally conservative Democrats, mostly from the Democratic Party's right-wing. It's a specific and structured group with a leadership team, rules, formal meetings, a recruitment process, a fundraising strategy, a special password, handshake, etc. Here's an up-to-date list of the actual membership.

Yesterday I went to visit an old friend whose husband was a major macher in the Music Biz. Actually he still is. She called up and offered to give me a dozen gold and platinum record awards to help Blue America raise money so, in her words, "we wind up with good Democrats not these [explitive deleted] Blue Dogs." So wasn't I thrilled to find that one of the dozen beautiful plaques is an incredible-looking official RIAA multi-platinum award for Who Let The Dogs Out by the Baha Men. Rather than sell it on eBay we're going to have a drawing for it. Everyone who donates-- regardless of how much-- at the BadDogs ActBlue page will be eligible to win the plaque. As soon as we cross $1,500 in total contributions, we'll put all the names into a hat-- whether that's one name or 200 names-- and pick one at random who will be the winner. If we cross the $1,500 mark today, we pick today. If we cross it in October, we pick then.

As for the Baha Men... old skool purists can find the original version here, but this remix is the one Heath Shuler, Congress' only Rugrats in Paris fanatic, reportedly plays in his office every Thursday afternoon before Steny Hoyer tells him its alright to go home.



Don't forget, here's the page-- and all it takes is a dollar to enter the contest. Right now we only have two registered candidates listed. Presumably there will soon be Democratic primary candidates running against Jim Cooper in Tennessee, Leonard Boswell in Iowa, and John Barrow in Georgia. And we'll be watching to see if others turn up as well. That's what the Blue America PAC box is doing on the page.