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Is it time yet to talk honestly about Maya Angelou?
American Thinker ^ | 05/30/2014 | Thomas Lifson

Posted on 05/30/2014 6:55:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

When excited bulletins on cable news let the public know that Maya Angelou had passed away, I bit my tongue and stayed my keyboard.  I generally follow the rule of letting the dead rest in peace for a day or two before writing critically of them. But this fine piece by Daniel J. Flynn in the American Spectator covers many of the points I would have brought up about the late poet/madam/actress/communist/all around phony.

Flynn calls her “an author more revered than read,” and that gets to the heart of the Angelou phenomenon. I will give her credit, as Flynn does, for playing a role very well. That role was as a victim who rose beyond her victimhood to become an icon. But an icon of victimhood as badge of honor, cultivating a voice, a manner, a persona that embodied dignity, thereby triggering waves of adulation from those who, out of guilt or hope, devoutly wished her to be a giant, so that all who have been a dealt a bad hand at birth could similarly rise and find dignity. She gave the suckers what they wanted.  Flynn has got her number:

“I’m not modest,” Angelou explained last year to the AP. “I have no modesty.” She got to know herself, apparently, after getting to know poetry and politics and songs and stage. She usurped her parents’ privilege by renaming herself after finding “Marguerite Johnson” not quite arresting enough. In this spirit, she insisted that others call her “Dr. Angelou” though she never obtained a college degree.

The fact that she turned left – hard left, embracing Fidel Castro, a murderous tyrant who has impoverished and enslaved his people – was a good career move.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: communismkills; hollywoodreds; mayaangelou; nakedcommunist; prodictator
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To: SeekAndFind
Mainstream media
Embraced by political correctness
Reflecting intolerant righteousness
Like sunlight dancing on a sewage lagoon.

Pools of liberal slime
With Communist hearts
And Fascist hands
Craft helpful harm to everyone
But themselves.

See anyone can be a "Maya Angelou".....

21 posted on 05/30/2014 7:20:41 AM PDT by cincinnati65
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To: ilovesarah2012
"If she had been white, we never would have heard of her."

Unless she had a black son of questionable fatherhood.

22 posted on 05/30/2014 7:25:52 AM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
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To: SeekAndFind
Flynn calls her “an author more revered than read"

Something similar could be said in regard to a certain trumpet player.

23 posted on 05/30/2014 7:27:29 AM PDT by Steely Tom (How do you feel about robbing Peter's robot?)
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To: Uncle Chip
She was an actress and not a very good one but she played her part to the final curtain call — and a whole lot of people applauded knowing that the whole thing was an act and her poetry was pathetic.

We agree.

(Wait a second; the room is spinning...)
24 posted on 05/30/2014 7:35:00 AM PDT by Resettozero
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To: SeekAndFind

She is a sham. A transparent fraud who impersonates an intellectual... though she barely speaks or writes properly (you can do than when you hide behind the wounded, oppressed and exploited ‘salt-of-the-earth’ shtick.

She made a career out of elevating BS personal opinions to the equivalent of logical conclusions.

Uh Huh... had enough of this CRAP


25 posted on 05/30/2014 7:36:57 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)
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To: SeekAndFind
she insisted that others call her “Dr. Angelou” though she never obtained a college degree.

And the leftist's demanded that we all revere her even though she had no talent.

26 posted on 05/30/2014 7:41:19 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: fwdude

What is The Left going to do now that Pete Seeger, Maya Angelou nee Marguerite Johnson, and Hugo Chavez are dead? Where have all the heroes gone?.........................


27 posted on 05/30/2014 7:41:28 AM PDT by Red Badger (Soon there will be another American Civil War. Will make the first one seem like a Tea Party........)
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To: SeekAndFind

Finally somebody speaks up about the fraud that was “Maya Angelou”.


28 posted on 05/30/2014 7:43:10 AM PDT by clintonh8r (I wish no harm on Gen. Shinseki, but perhaps he should consider seppuku.....)
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To: fwdude
Was "jazz poetry" the progenitor of rap?
29 posted on 05/30/2014 8:14:42 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum ("The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government." --Tacitus)
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To: SeekAndFind

She wasn’t a poet...Now Nipsey Russell, THAT was a poet.


30 posted on 05/30/2014 8:16:15 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: cincinnati65

Really quite nicely done!

Let me try my hand :)

The Main Stream stagnates, corrects its course
Politically. Brilliant, intolerant righteousness
Reflects - like a dazzling Deity dancing
On fetid sewage, remnants of the national psyche.

The DC swampland pools the slime of bogus
Poets. Communist hearts, Fascist hands
Unite, crafting helpful harm for all -
But themselves.


31 posted on 05/30/2014 8:18:24 AM PDT by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

From a local radio station:

EMS Worker Suspended For Comments During Angelou 911 Call
A Forsyth County emergency dispatcher has been suspended with pay after comments he made were recorded during a 911 call connected to Maya Angelou’s death. John Ruckh has worked for Forsyth EMS for 24-years and he was not the telecommunicator who took the call. However he can be heard in the background talking about an interview that Oprah Winfrey had done with the BBC last fall. Ruckh said he was simply talking about the interview where Oprah said racism persists because generations of older white people were raised hating blacks, and that some people disrespect the office of the President, simply because President Obama is black. Ruckh says his comments were in no way meant to be racist, and he was simply discussing the interview.

WSJS News
Copyright: Curtis Media Group
Fri May 30, 8:17:12 AM EST


32 posted on 05/30/2014 8:24:43 AM PDT by punknpuss
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To: SeekAndFind

The famous poets of our post 60s era, NAMBLA’s gay leftist Allen Ginsberg, and this affirmative action leftist gal, Angelou.


33 posted on 05/30/2014 8:29:18 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: Responsibility2nd

Former Liberal friends liked to e-mail with the tagline:

I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~ Maya Angelou

They made themselves former friends when they demanded no further contact or friendship following the revelation their friend was supportive of the Second Amendment and the responsible use of firearms by juveniles as in my own childhood. They did not appreciate the 1st Amendment right to oppose their own viewpoints with free speech in response to their own speech. Somehow they failed to understand and heed the part of their quotation which said, “but people will never forget how you made them feel.”


34 posted on 05/30/2014 8:34:39 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: SeekAndFind

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
-Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906, Sympathy

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom
-Maya Angelou

Compare and contrast the work of these two black American poets.


35 posted on 05/30/2014 8:40:21 AM PDT by heartwood
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To: ansel12

Ginsberg, at least, was an enormously great poet.

I believe it was Alexander King who said something to the effect of, “Talent is a strange bird. It’s known to perch in the most unlikely trees.” Ginsberg was one such. Great, great talent. Angelou - mediocre, at best.


36 posted on 05/30/2014 8:41:44 AM PDT by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

You’re probably right. But I’d like some honest discussion about that double-talking phony “intellectual” Cornell West. He’s turned jive talk into postmodern academic bafflegab and that seems to be the extent of his
accomplishments.


37 posted on 05/30/2014 8:54:17 AM PDT by Bernard Marx
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Maya Angelou “an author more revered than read” and a phoney baloney hard left communist.

It takes courage but yeah, it's time to talk the hard truth...

38 posted on 05/30/2014 9:02:43 AM PDT by GOPJ (Maya Angelou “an author more revered than read” and a phoney baloney hard-left communist.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I’d never heard of her until she died. I bet her so-called poems didn’t even rhyme.


39 posted on 05/30/2014 9:20:20 AM PDT by Veggie Todd (The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. TJ)
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To: dagogo redux

I never saw it although Ginsberg was always pushed on us, but I’m one of those who can’t judge poetry anyway, like a man with no taste buds trying to know what you are talking about with preferred foods and flavors, aside from Tennyson, I have never understood why they don’t just write it out.


40 posted on 05/30/2014 9:28:49 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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