Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind a lil’ website that ensures you’ll never be free of that annoying acquaintance from high school or, perhaps in the future, Donald Trump, sent a waterborne 4th of July greeting on Sunday that can safely be described as unexpected.
Holding an enormous American flag, Zuck zooms above a body of water atop an electric hydrofoil surfboard. Even though his feet are strapped in, the 37-year-old zillionaire, who I think most would agree qualified as an “indoor kid,” shows a remarkable amount of balance. Such skill suggests that he perhaps rehearsed this move for quite some time.
Most striking is the choice of patriotic music. Not John Philip Sousa or Irving Berlin, but the John Denver hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
If we consider Zuckerberg’s 2018 hourly salary, as calculated by Business Insider, he earned about $28,538 in the time it takes to watch this video, which was posted on his Instagram account. (A platform acquired by Facebook in 2012, in case you forgot.)
“Take Me Home, Country Roads” was initially written by songwriters Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert and intended for Johnny Cash. But Denver heard it and loved it, and he worked on it with Danoff and Nivert further before recording the song in January 1971. It wasn’t an instant smash but slowly climbed the charts that year, eventually becoming the staple it is today.
The melancholy melody and nostalgic lyrics haven’t only been embraced by the Country and Western community, as evidenced by one of the finest crossover cover tunes in music by the late Toots Hibbert and the Maytals.
In 2016 and 2017, the song definitely had a “moment,” appearing in the films Free Fire, Alien: Covenant, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Logan Lucky, and Kingsman: Golden Circle.
And now it’s the soundtrack for Zuck trying to win over America.
The tech mogul’s aquatic patriotism did not go unnoticed by yuksters on social media.
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