Chautauqua

The events of the August Congressional recess provided so much fertile fodder for the Chautauqua Center for Political Poetry, we decided to extend the Summer Workshop (at taxpayer expense, of course). As a result, we’re proud to present this paean to profligacy:

Ode to Obamacare

If Congresswoman Jackson-Lee can lobby for a bill,
But not respond to questions from constituents until
She calls her Help Line just to find out what the hell is in it,
Why should we entrust her as our proxy for a minute?

And when she goes on CNN to sidestep and evade,
Why should we, as voters, brook her negligent charade?
Rick Sanchez ain’t conservative. His viewers all agree
That he’s not part of any vast, right-wing conspiracy.

But this will be okay with us. We’ll settle right back down,
Content to float while clowns in Congress try to help us drown
In complication, obfuscation, sophistry, and tax,
While tending to their union pals, entitlements, and PACs.

That’s how it’s done in Washington: they lie, and we all love it.
And if we don’t, too bad, my friends. They’ll tell us all to shove it.
‘Cause they know best, and they’re prescribing economic ruin.
So take the pills we voted for. It’s our own juice we stew in.

As we were wrapping up the Chautauqua Summer Arts Weekend, the participants in the Chautauqua Workshop for Political Poetry seemed to be working feverishly to complete a group project. Since we’re so proud of our members’ work, we present here the fruits of the Political Poetry group’s labors, a piece they’ve chosen to call, “Rhetorical Robbery”.  Please join me in extending thanks and congratulations to this industrious group for giving us this rhapsodic rune to ruin.

And so, without further ado:

Rhetorical Robbery

If Cash for Clunkers weren’t so foolish,
We’d be driving Ramblers.
Since rationed healthcare is so ghoulish,
Sick folks would be gamblers.

From auto parts to body parts,
Barack has all the answers.
Until it comes to wheels and hearts,
To brakes and common cancers.

“We’ll give you cars and cure your ills.
And this I guarantee:
We’ll run GM, prescribe your pills,
And do it all for free.”

Obamanomics draws the loop
But don’t a circle call it.
It panders to each int’rest group
While stealing from each wallet.

The loop that’s drawn will only close
When we’re all queued for service.
We’ll all hold hands, while lackeys doze,
And we become more nervous.

So, keep your car and keep your doc,
To lose them is a crime.
And wake up now. It’s not too late.
But we don’t have much time.

The Chautauqua Center for Musical Activism recently concluded a project, inspired by the contemporary political climate. We undertook to revise “America the Beautiful”, amending the lyrics  initially composed by Katharine Lee Bates, while retaining the original score by Samuel A. Ward. We imagine this new composition will be performed unless and until it is deemed free speech, fishy, or otherwise in opposition to the present administration’s totalitarian agendas of any stripe. Then it will disappear like an anti-Stalinist dissident.

All together now:

Obamica the Beautiful

O beautiful for specious lies,
Audacious hope in vain,
For purple prose and promises
Deceitful and insane!

Obmica! Obamica!
God shed His grace on we
Who now endure your fatal cure
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for union fraud
Whose rife corruptions spread
From auto plants to public schools
To bleed incentive dead.

Obamica! Obamica!
You revel in self-awe.
In your new role you now extol
A mockery of law.

O beautiful for healthcare schemes
That tax the nation blind,
That leave us sick and doctorless,
But leave your pockets lined.

Obamica! Obamica!
You have us by the cubes.
But don’t expect us to accede
While we go down the tubes.

O beautiful for patriot dreams,
For cherishing what’s ours,
For challenging your senseless schemes,
Foreshortening your powers.

Obamica! Obamica!
Be careful where you delve,
Or you’ll be outside looking in
By year two-thousand-twelve.

An old adage says, “Those who can’t do, teach.” The Chautauqua Center for Entrepreneurial Initiative espouses a corollary dictum: those who can’t make a living doing something constructive gripe about those who are making a living doing something constructive. Some jamoke named Glenn Greenwald is the latest in a rash of whiny nincompoops and public nuisances to whom that dictum applies. One could hardly catalog Goofy Glenn’s myriad delusions — nor would any constructive person spend the time — but here’s a beauty: he’s the author of a book called, How Would a Patriot Act? which is billed as a “critique” of the Bush administration’s use of executive power. What in the world would Gutless Glenn know about patriotism?

Pop Quiz #1: For fifty percent of your grade, do you imagine this clown will write a critique of the Obama administration, even though the topic is rife enough to require multiple volumes to cover the abuses of executive power in just the first six months of Obama the Omnipotent’s reign?

• Hint #1: Groveling Glenn’s a lawyer, too, just his like his buddy, Barack the Blameless.
• Hint #2: Not on your life.

The latest bug up Galled Glenn’s balmy bum is the fact that General Electric, which owns MSNBC, wants to muzzle Keith “The Crank” Olbermann. Who wouldn’t? The Crank hasn’t had a coherent articulation since he left ESPN. It seems MSNBC wants Olbermann to tone down his demented diatribes against Bill O’Reilly. Love O’Reilly or hate him, The O’Reilly Factor is the most-watched program in all of cable news. Why? Because O’Reilly makes sense to more people than does the lunatic Olbermann. Why wouldn’t GE want to keep the feathers of millions of prospective customers unruffled? But that logic escapes Gloomy Glenn. His beef is that he sees The Crank’s ranting and NBC’s corporate interests as being “unrelated”. Here’s a slice of his peculiar naivete:

[Olbermann's muzzling] was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE [then Glenn abandons logical connections to write] … A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April [if the meeting was overrun by GE shareholders, how did MSNBC get unrelated to GE's corporate interests?] … So here we have yet another example — perhaps the most glaring yet — of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation.

Whew! I guess I feel better about the fact that Groping Glenn is clutching at straws to write incongruous gibberish for Salon, rather than trying to interpret the law for a corporation, the profit motives and employment potential of which he’d never understand. And I know I feel better for every poor schmoe he’s not representing in court. But come on. The dude’s 42 years old, and he’s this clueless?

Pop Quiz #2: For the remaining fifty percent of your grade, of which of the following concepts is Green Glenn utterly unaware:

1. Corporate policy
2. Organizational codes of conduct
3. Employees having to abide by 1 and 2
4. Any cerebral phenomena other than his feelings
5. All of the above.

Okay. So, I took it easy on you. You’re welcome.

One last question, which isn’t part of any exam but should have been part of Guarded Glenn’s education: How does a guy like this manage to remain so sheltered? I was introduced to the ways of the world and the reality of obeying rules at the age of three:

My family was going to the shore for a vacation. My father told me to stand on the sidewalk, which rose a foot or so above the curb, while he put my younger brother in the car. That was the rule. He always put my brother in first, then he lifted me in. Not this time. As soon as he turned his back, I took a step toward the embankment. I lost my balance, fell forward like a tree, went forehead first onto the edge of the door sill, and my noggin was as broken as the rule. We detoured to the emergency room on the way to the shore; and I received my first stitches, my first lesson in trial and error, and my first painful taste of breaking the rules. But that error didn’t keep me from trying again. And the breaking of rules neither eliminated them nor made me unfailingly heed them; although, the pain of that first break did teach me to respect them and to know them before I broke them.

Creating requires rule-breaking now and then. If you’re not creating, you’re waiting. If you’re not making, you’re taking. I have no idea what people like Gun-shy Glenn are waiting for. I have no idea why he doesn’t realize the buck Jeff Immelt is making for GE trumps the buck The Crank is taking from Jeff Imelt. But he doesn’t.

So, like all of the whiny waiters and takers we study here at the Chautauqua Center, he exercises his last resort: he blames it on the buck.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

If you don’t think the world’s become a giant soap opera — in large part due to the indiscriminate nature of electronic media, which, while ubiquitous and unending, still relies on the old stand-by of sensationalism to draw attention — you’re not really paying attention. Ironic, isn’t it? With the help of electronic media, the world’s become a soap opera because, along with sensationalism, modernity now operates on two abiding doctrines: popularity and celebrity. Those doctrines have replaced two others: the rule of law and minding our now business. As a result, we’d rather be saved than to save. And we’d rather savor sensationalism than do anything else. Witness the evanescent evolution of The New World Superman.

In our last episode, Gary “Area 51” McKinnon was fighting extradition to these here United States. Area 51 was hoping not to face the music for having hacked into 97 U.S. government computers in the altruistically humanitarian effort to steal the formula for environmentally pure UFO fuel. Because the circumstances of that episode were nowhere near absurd enough to satisify the lust for inanity and the existential ennui of our viewers, our writers have upped the ante by extending this story into one of U.S. politics as world theater. This serves to expand our story line and its subsequent plot possibilities ad infinitum. At the same time, it creates burlesque on a global scale — giving the charade of U.S. politics a global sweep and indicating the length of the strides our hero, Barack the Beknighted (BTB), is willing to take to save the world, as long as the world will continue to adulate him and let him do whatever he wants.

You may remember that, in a back story introduced during the Area 51 episode, BTB deigned to invite a beat cop, a Harvard law scholar, and Joe the Blowhard (JTB) to the White House to settle a matter of local ordinance and racial ignorance over a glass of suds. The gesture wasn’t intended to demonstrate BTB’s ego, his deference to a fellow Harvard law professor, his lack of a sense of prioritization suitable for the President of the United States, or that he’d gladly let his domestic and foreign duties go to Hell in favor of a Rose Garden photo opp. Rather, it was meant to be evidence of the fact that BTB can be all things to all people all the time.

BTB is the New Superhero for the New World. He’s the President of the United States as executive agent, sole agent, supreme agent. Yes, he’s Super Agent: faster than a creeping legislature, more powerful than the Constitution imagined, able to leap tall tales at a single bound. He’s Super Pol! Yes, it’s Super Pol, strange visitor from another … oh, no you don’t. We’re not touching that one with a ten-foot pole.

Anyway, in today’s exciting continuation, the mother of Area 51 appealed to our hero to save her son from the evils of  … well … the law. Speaking outside the British High Court, Area 51’s mum, Janis Sharp, said:

[Gary was] naive enough to admit to computer misuse without having a lawyer and without one being present. [Editor's note: It's only a good idea to tell the truth sometimes -- and sometimes only with a lawyer present -- especially if you know the law, have broken the law, and don't like the law.] We are heartbroken. If the law says it’s fair to destroy someone’s life in this way then it’s a bad law … He’s very ill, he’s got really bad chest pains, it’s affected him emotionally, mentally, every way, he’s terrified … Obama wouldn’t have this … He doesn’t want the first guy extradited for computer misuse to be … a UFO guy … I’m just praying, please hear us, Obama, because I know you would do the right thing.

That’s right. Janis Sharp, a woman who is not a U.S. citizen and, so, not a (legally) loyal subject of BTB, knows the former law professor has enough disdain for the law that he will simply ignore it to do the emotionally popular thing (see Wagoner, Rick). She knows BTB is above (well, of course he’s above it, he can fly) and bigger than the law. She knows that if it will curry favor, win votes, distract attention from his mathematically impossible and consequentially disastrous economic fiascoes, and pump up the ego that is the source of his super powers, he’ll do it.

Most important, she knows viewers will ignore his flouting the rule of law because … well … because he’s going to save us, darn it.

Stay tuned.