Anarchists’ Tune Is Music to Dornan’s Ears

It’s the kind of lyric that a die-hard like former Rep. Robert K. Dornan finds irresistible: “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never going to keep me down.”

So he began to use it last month as a welcoming ditty on his Web site. But now it’s got him at cross-purposes with Chumbawamba, the English rock band that wrote those words for its hit song, “Tubthumping,” and now wants to get back at Dornan by parodying him.

Why would Dornan--a devout Catholic, hard-right Republican and anti-gay rights advocate--pick their music anyway?

Band members play at gay pride festivals and tell fans to steal their CDs from chain stores. The band even sings an ode to 1960s satirist Lenny Bruce while one member wears a nun’s habit, swills liquor and uses a rosary and cross fashioned into a cigarette lighter to ignite her smokes.

“It’s nothing to do with the band’s ideology or accepting their behavior,” said campaign manager Mark Dornan, the candidate’s son. “This is about their message about the suppression of freedom. It is just a raucous, youthful, energetic way to make a point. And, I guess from the response, it worked.”

But band members, who Monday were in New York City for an Irish festival sponsored by Guinness Brewing Co., are declaring a cultural war. First, they trashed Dornan for “being such a right-wing, racist, anti-abortion bigot.”

Being anarchists, though, they want no part of suing Dornan for copyright infringement. “It would be pretty dull if we got lawyers on to him,” band member Alice Nutter said.

Instead, they are “going to have a go at him” by setting some of Dornan’s wilder speeches to music, just as they did with Brit politicians they scorned, Nutter said.

“It’s much more exciting to fight in a creative way,” she said. “We will show him that some aspects of pop culture bite back.”

The peculiar pairing of the English band and the Irish American politician caused a media stir over the weekend after the band’s press agent, Ellen Zoe Golden, put out a release. The release noted the irony of the “man who spearheaded the prohibition of gays in the military” marching to an anthem written by “anarchist humanitarians.”

“Tubthumping” is basically an ode to getting drunk, being nostalgic and then, maybe, singing “Danny Boy.”

“I didn’t know about their political background when we put the song on the Web site,” Robert Dornan said. “I thought they were talking about prizefighting, not drinking.”

Several London newspapers, as well as American wire services and radio stations, also phoned the Dornan for Congress headquarters in Garden Grove for comment, Mark Dornan said.

“We [also] identify with it because of our Irish heritage,” he said. “A tub thumper is someone who would run out in the street and thump on a tub to warn of British oppression. We’re going to keep using it because we love it and it’s our message. They aren’t going to keep us down.”

Nutter went wild at that one. “We’re not Irish,” she said. “Dornan is a complete idiot.”

The Dornans would like to meet with band members, but Nutter is not interested in meeting the politician.

“What for? A battle of the giants?” she said. “I don’t want to have a discussion with him because I don’t think the guy can be so ignorant and open-minded at the same time.”