Tesla invented DC!?

"This banjo runs on evil DC!

I was listening to Pat Kenny on the radio this morning while driving to collect a few bits and pieces for work. On comes this folkish song with odd lyrics; a song about Nikola Tesla. I'm a great fan of Tesla's work, and champion him whenever I can. It therefore horrified me when the composers and performers of the song made some horrendous erroneous comments about Tesla, in the interview with Pat following the song.

The song, "Tesla's Hotel Room...", was performed by a duo called "The Handsome Family", and was a blend of American country folk "ding a ling ding ding" music that I dont have much time for. The interview commenced and the woman of the band started talking about how great Tesla was and all the wonderful things he invented. How nice, I thought. She then stunned me by suddenly saying that Tesla invented DC while Edison invented AC electrical systems. This is incorrect, its the other way around but her musical partner concurred with her. Fair enough, you might thing, just a little slip of the tongue or fart from the brain, but what she actually said was "Tesla lost to [evil] Edison, Tesla invented DC but Edison invented AC electricity which we all use today". This struck me as monumentally awful! Here you have a band singing about Tesla's greatness, the inventions and discoveries he made that are unknown to most people, and then they give the credit of AC electricity, which perhaps was the greatest invention in modern times, to his peer Thomas Edison! Edison, the man who electrocuted cats with AC to prove how evil and deadly it was compared to his DC system!

It gets worse, look at the lyrics to the song:

"Edison and Westinghouse
in silk brocade
ate oysters Rockerfeller
with French champagne

But Tesla grew thin
eating only saltines
going days in his lab
Without any sleep"

WTF!? Tesla went into AC business with Westinghouse, he was the main financial backer of the system, just because Tesla didnt want to be rich is no reason to say that Edison and Westinghouse were in cahoots with each other, lording it up together big time, while Tesla starved to death. Tesla and Westinghouse bitterly fought against Edison in the "War of Currents".

Following this, Pat then asked if they had any other interests, yerwanno pipes up again "I'm really into dark matter". Listen love, try having a bit more interest in the "grey matter" first!