I haven't thought about this for a long time, but that song was popular when I was a senior in high school and I remember talking about it in the cafeteria one day. My friend Chris told me that he thought _I Started a Joke_ was based on _The Passover Plot_, a sort of conspiracy-theory book about the origins of Christianity. I used to see that book all over the place, but it and its successor, _Those Incredible Christians_, have all but disappeared; they don't even turn up at library booksales any more.