Deadhead poets and society

Jewish World Review ^ | 2/14/02 | Marianne M. Jennings

[rhema]

First Lady Laura Bush astonished the nation's intelligentsia because they learned that this subversive hick of the East Wing has been holding symposiums on literature. The Northeast snobs had to grapple with their discovery that a conservative knows literature exists. They were flummoxed that the Bush two-hour sessions covered Mark Twain, the Harlem Renaissance, and female writers from west of the Mississippi. They were unaware that people west of the Mississippi could read.

The media, politicos, and think-tankers have been duped by Mrs. Bush's demure appearance and stay-at-home background. Not I. Mrs. Bush reeks of "I know who I am and don't give two Texas hoots what the rest of you think." What fools these men be who dismissed her as benign. Mrs. Bush is one sly fox, complete with auburn highlights. Those red fingernails are the evidence that still waters run deep.

Liberal rubes were victims of a classic bait and switch. Mrs. Bush's literary series shoots shotgun-size holes in their stereotype of Republican spouses. Mrs. Bush had black historian David Levering Lewis and Ursula Smith, one of them thar Western writers, participate in her White House series. Both these writers despise Mr. Bush, because, like most literati who make the New York Times Book Review, they cotton to rogue dictators.

When the elite and the fourth estate discovered this stealth usurpation of their intellectual territory as well as the bipartisan nature of Mrs. Bush's author invitations, they were outraged. "Why," they queried, "do you invite confessed enemies of your husband, disdainers of his intellect, and believers that he stole the presidency via a wacko right-wing U.S. Supreme Court?" Mrs. Bush responded, "There's nothing political about American literature."

Her response really got the lefties' goats, or whatever irks animal rights folk if I have unabashedly equated the goat family with anything untoward. "Nothing political???" they screeched, naming Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath and The Crucible. "Why, that's all there is to literature," they shouted, "Politics! The rest is just details."

Mrs. Bush has trumped these snooty sprigs. Mrs. Bush is a true conservative, albeit a slightly deceptive one with that aura of innocence and feigned detachment from the West Wing power circle. True conservatives do not impose personal animus as the penalty for political disagreement. They listen, read, search, inquire, and question. Their only censorship is quality, and quality does not always fall along political lines. Mrs. Bush explores good literature. Period.

By contrast, Huckleberry Finn is the most frequently banned book in public schools. Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies are but footnotes compared to the bans on To Kill a Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. Liberals have redacted phrases from classic literature, banished the very books tossed at Mrs. Bush as evidence of literature's politics, and used the Oprah book club as a quality screen. Mrs. Bush's political ideology does not control her appreciation for a good writer.

Mrs. Bush lesson on bipartisan literature has fallen on deaf ears. Some leftists won't retract their claws long enough to visit the White House. Mrs. Bush had scheduled a poetry symposium until pedestrian poet Sam Hamill (not exactly Keats or Wordsworth) threw a hissy-fit. Upon receiving the Laura Bush invitation he responded, "I was overcome by a kind of nausea," and organized poets against the war and Bush.

Hamill declined the invite by displaying abhorrent manners and bad-mouthing the hostess's husband, calling Mr. Bush "morally bankrupt." Mr. Clinton was in Chapter 11 moral restructuring for 8 years, but Mr. Hamill never spake a word then, forsooth.

As a result of this poet's petulant posture, Mrs. Bush issued a statement and a cancellation. While she respects all views, she added, "It would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum." Well said.

I say to Mr. Hamill what I offer Hollywood "artistes" such as Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, and George Clooney. Make your movies and shut up. Make your point about your politics through art, not with a club to our heads. Dear poets, offer us your iambic pentameter. Rhyme your verses. Inspire. Cause us to question. Let your art speak for itself. Shrill lectures detract.

We understand that poets hate war. They trot amongst daffodils, clouds and the shores of Gitche Gumee. The rest of us protect them in their inspirational la-la lands so that literature thrives. Their big stick is soft-spoken eloquence that moves us to constraint. Personal vendettas mar the beauty of authors' words. Mrs. Bush understands these points. The deadhead poets' society that RSVPed via personal invective does not.

[cyborg]

Hi Rhema,

That's why she's my second favorite first lady. My first favorite is Dubya's mom, Barbara. What a dignified lady. I guess the liberals are upset that Laura Bush showed that yes there are black poets that don't need to write about hating whitey (amiri baraka) and aren't Oprah's mentor (Maya Angelou). There are actually women who are the "real" feminists a la Christina Hoff Summers. They don't write poetry about their vaginas and how lovely abortion is. To a liberal, that's high class literature.

[Revolting cat!]

Here's a letter to the editor from today's San Francisco Chtonicle:

ODE TO FERLINGHETTI

Editor -- Someone should tell Lawrence Ferlinghetti that the draft has been over for years. A really pathetic poem, not factual, not enlightening, but filled with the same paranoia spewed by so many brainwashed left-wing radicals ("Speak out," Feb. 14). This is my reply, written in five minutes.

And an ignorance abounds across the land 

And naive Americans stick their heads in the sand 

Into the beginning liberation of Iraqi slaves 

The war with Saddam, the torturer of Baghdad 

Will face the heroic military volunteers 

As the delusional anti-war morons speak out 

Mouthing off the same tired cliches 

Again and again against 

Their own country 

And the cowards cower 

With their heads in the sand 

While better men and women 

To the killing fields again go 

And the shrill brainwashed shriek 

Filling their sycophantic marching comrades 

With paranoiac tales of fear 

That all the great writers and poets and painters 

Will be rounded up 

By their most feared and hated enemy 

The Bush administration 

So all you lovers of liberty 

All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness 

All you lovers and sleepers 

Deep in your private dreams 

Now is the time for you to speak out 

Against the hypocritical anti-war haters, who 

Never spoke out against Clinton when he was dropping bombs 

And now, given all the real facts about Iraq 

Would rather bash Bush and side with Saddam. 

B.J. SULLIVAN
San Francisco

[Revolting cat!]

Let me just add that I regard the highly esteemed Mr Ferlinghetti not a poet but nothing more than a stalinist agitation propagandist. If you absolutely have to see his trashy "poem", you can find it somewhere on the sfgate.com website.

[steplock]

ferlenghetti is STILL alive??

Heck! He was old when I was a senior in HS in '68.

At least he looked ancient back then. I liked him because of his 'dirty poerty' ;>)

Hey! I was a teenage all-American Male! Playboy, dirty poetry etc!

[Catspaw]

Yup, Ferlenghetti is still alive. He's one of the few of that era not done in by booze, drugs or a combo.

[irv]

Just to prove that not all poets are insipid, head in the clouds lefties, here is a sample of my own, Conservative, poetry:

In the corner, a Kentucky long rifle;
A muzzle-loader, to stand at times in the breach.
Ours is a tradition of long rifles,
And harsh lessons,
Refreshing the roots.

I don't claim it's good poetry, but I'll put it up against most of those self-satisfied left-wing elitist "poets" any day.

[WOSG]

bravo, very nice.