Prohibition is an awful flop.
 We like it.
 It can't stop what it's meant to stop.
 We like it.
 It's left a trail of graft and slime,
 It don't prohibit worth a dime,
 It's filled our land with vice and crime.
 Nevertheless, we're for it.

(1931)

Note: Prohibition: The period (1920-1933) during which the 18th Amendment

forbidding the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was in force in the United States.

You’d think a 1931 poem about a long-since repealed law in a single country would be badly dated by now. You’d be wrong. You’d think that a poem which on the surface veers between nursery rhyme and doggerel would be at best a passing, topical protest with little of enduring value. You’d be wrong again. Despite Adams’s reputation as a purveyor of light verse, I think today’s poem is actually a deeper and more significant poem than it first appears.

“Prohibition” speaks out against every law, every regulation, and, indeed, every custom that was instituted because it “seemed like a good idea at the time”, and retained with limpet-like tenacity because, despite evidence that it wasn’t helping, dropping it would invalidate someone’s cherished theory about the way things should work. And, almost needless to say, things are little different today than they were back in Adams’s 1930s - the specifics vary but the principle is depressingly constant.

The nursery-rhyme form actually adds to the poem’s impact - the repeated “we like it” response is (without any explicit commentary) held up as both simplistic and foolish. Again, the poem’s quotability and memorability are both greatly enhanced by its simple, singsong structure. Of course, the use of doggerel and nursery rhymes for political protest has a long and honourable tradition - the implication being that this is not a poet’s poem, but a people’s poem - and “Prohibition” takes its place comfortably within that tradition.

— Martin

Links

Biography: American journalist and radio personality (1881-1960)
http://www.mgilleland.com/fpabio.htm