Want and Good

Two things there are in every man,
Cohabiting since world began,
That dance in difficult détente:
Both what is good and what we want.
Though men may search philosophy
For want and good in unity,
It can't be found in Hume or Kant
That what is good is what we want;
And you may study Wittgenstein
Or other Germans just as fine,
Or visit Plato’s neighborhood,
But want is want and good is good.
For those who run Narcissus’ course,
Or shop in solipsism’s bourse,
The fond desire is unrequite,
For want and good will not unite.
But those who hold their wants less dear
May find their way from wood to clear:
The two are one for those who would
Align their wants toward the good.

Jonah Goldberg’s Dictionary

“The Corner has arrived! ‘Wahoo! Wait, what is the Corner?’
you ask. Excellent question. Well, the Corner is something
a bit different. It’s not a blog-site like AndrewSullivan.com
or Kausfiles or any of the one-man-bands popping up across
the web. ... Suffice it to say, this is a bold experiment. ...
Rich Lowry, Rod Dreher, and myself will be filing observations,
arguments, complaints, interesting links, jokes, commentary
—perhaps even recipes—throughout the day.”
                                        — Jonah Goldberg, 1/23/02



See that creature, green and shiny,
Sitting daily in the bog?
Lily pad beneath its heinie?
Jonah says it’s not a frog.

Little tabby makes a beeline
After birdies like a shot;
When you say she’s called a feline,
Jonah answers, “No, she’s not.”

Look, a happy crew is floating
On the sea so blue and fair;
When you note those folks are boating,
Jonah comments, “Au contraire.”

See that thing with lots of pages?
Index, bib, and T of C?
Writing captured for the ages?
Not a book, says Jonah G.

Look at Jonah’s bold new feature:
Commentary, jokes, and links!
What is that exotic creature?
“Not a blog,” our Jonah winks.

Hiawatha versus the Bloggers

     By the shores of old Pacific,
By the shining big sea water,
Lived a brave named Hiawatha
(Name was really “Cavanaugh” but
Here we’ll call him Hiawatha
‘Cause it fits the meter better.)
     Hiawatha grew to manhood
In the famous tribe of Sucksters:
Famous for their wit were Sucksters,
For their wit and hipness noted;
Long they thrived with wit ironic
And the very latest slang terms.
     Then the Suckster tribe was shattered,
By the dot-com meltdown shattered;
Awful was the sudden stopping
Of the paychecks of the Sucksters:
Hiawatha and the other
Sucksters had to hit the highway.
     Hiawatha wandered bleakly
Through the wastes of dot-com meltdown,
Wandered through the blasted landscape,
Wandered ‘til his legs grew weary,
‘Til his witty tongue grew silent,
Looking for another paycheck.
     When he found the tribe of Ojers,
Happy was our Hiawatha,
Happily he joined the Ojers,
Though the Ojers, truth to tell, were
Not as hip as were the Sucksters,
Not as famed for wit ironic,
Not as up on all the slang terms;
But the paychecks kept on coming.
     Then one day our Hiawatha
Started hearing tales of wonder,
Tales of wild and savage wonder,
Of a tribe known as the Bloggers,
Of a tribe that posted widely,
Much more widely than the Ojers,
Posted posts of wit and humor,
Posts of breaking news reporting,
Posts of pointed commentary,
Posts of savage icon breaking,
Posts of restless erudition,
All without a single paycheck.
     Filled with fear and fascination
Went the trembling Hiawatha,
Went to find the savage Bloggers,
Went to find the fearsome tribesmen,
Went to find the ones who dared to
Offer up their rude and savage
Postings while completely lacking
Institutional umbrella.
     Many days and nights he traveled
Through the wastes of dot-com meltdown,
Past the empty shells that once were
Shining bright with wit and promise,
Traveled many days and nights more
Through the empty wilds of Heartland,
Through the wild and savage lands where
People far outnumbered keyboards.
     Then one day he heard a tapping,
Soft at first but growing louder,
Louder with the sound of keyboards,
Keyboards tapping out their rhythm,
And the sound of mice all clicking,
Clicking with a wild abandon,
Clicking like a raging tempest,
Clicking like a plague of locust,
Clicking out a sound of rapture:
He had finally found the Bloggers.
     Softly crept our Hiawatha,
Softly toward the forest clearing
Where the fearsome tribe of Bloggers
Were with frantic rhythm posting.
There he rubbed his eyes in wonder,
Wonder and incomprehension
At the scene laid wide before him:
Hundreds of the Bloggers saw he,
Hundreds of the fearsome tribesmen,
Fingers flying over keyboards,
Mice with nervous digits clicking,
But within the raging maelstrom
That attacked his staggered senses
There was not a single paycheck.
     As he watched the awesome fury
Of the Bloggers, of their posting,
He began to make out slowly
Some of those he had heard tell of,
Some of those he knew the names of,
Some of those whose sites he’d gone to.
     There he saw the princely Andrew,
Eloquent and energetic,
Filled with righteous indignation
At all those who did not get it.
     And he saw the kindly Jarvis,
Witness to the terror outrage,
Writing posts that still were flavored
With the taste of dust and ashes.
     And he saw Virginia Postrel,
Gazing with a look of rapture,
Gazing off into the future,
Boundless and dynamic future.
     Steve Den Beste there, writing longer
Posts than any average human
Had endurance or the brains to
Read in their immense entirety.
     Mr. Penny, cursing at the
Globe and Mail that he was crumpling;
There the Quick one, bias proudly
Shown to all and sundry readers;
Over there the young Norwegians,
Posting in a second language;
There a man a sword was swinging,
Singing of some ancient battle.
     Over there were two men working,
Two men working like a dozen,
Glazed their eyes and slack their jaws were
From their reading every paper,
From their viewing every pundit,
From their watching every Blogger.
     Then he saw a host of women,
Savage women, fierce and warlike,
Shiloh Bucher and Ms. Solent,
Moira Breen and Joanne Jacobs,
Fair Natalija from Croatia,
All defending sense and honor,
All defending freedom’s charter,
All dispensing smacks aplenty
To the dolts who’d long deserved them.
     Then he saw the Layne-and-Welch man,
Saw the weasel whipper walking,
Walking on four legs instead of
Two like everybody else’s;
Then he saw the fearsome creature
Was composed of two men fastened,
Fastened by a thousand tiny
Sutures made of links back-atcha.
     There was Sarge, the one called Stryker,
He of links and sources martial,
He of fiery short-fuse temper,
He of language extra salty;
When his site began its loading,
With its urpy greenish color,
With its glaring John Wayne photo,
Little children scattered, screaming.
     Sitting in the clearing’s center
Sat the largest of the Bloggers,
Sat the fiercest of the Bloggers,
Sat the one called InstaPundit,
And the fearstruck Hiawatha
Saw that he was typing faster,
Typing many times as fast as
All the other fearsome Bloggers;
With his left hand he drank coffee,
With his right hand he sent faxes,
In each ear he wore an earpiece:
In his left ear NPR played,
In his right ear it was C-SPAN;
On his desk sat two computers,
One for input, one for output;
He was writing, at the same time,
Four new posts for rapid posting,
Three new articles for websites,
Two new legal journal pieces,
And a new edition of the
Corpus Juris (that’s for lawyers);
Round his neck he wore a necklace,
From the necklace there were dangling
Tiny models of computers,
Dozens of the tiny models,
And among the tribe of Bloggers
It was whispered that the necklace
Represented all the hits that
InstaPundit tallied daily,
Whispered that each tiny model
Represented hits one thousand.
     Shaken was our Hiawatha,
Shaken at the scene before him,
For he knew the tribe of Ojers
Were, against this swarm of posting,
Counted as exactly nothing.
     Still he thought that he should show them,
Show them with a demonstration,
Just the sort of man a pro was
Ere he left their rude encampment.
So he then let out a whistle,
High and screeching, piercing whistle,
And the whistle made the Bloggers
Stare upon our Hiawatha.
     When he had their full attention,
Hiawatha gave a jaunty
Wave to all the savage Bloggers;
Then he slowly pirouetted,
Facing backside to the Bloggers,
And he slowly dropped his trousers
Dropped his trousers to his ankles,
And his naked bum he wiggled,
Wiggled at the mass of Bloggers,
Like a moon come out at midnight.
     Then he gathered up his trousers,
Reattached his belt and trousers,
Walked away from savage tribesmen,
Walked away from rude encampment,
Walked away with satisfaction;
As he walked he laughed most loudly,
Laughed and shouted out most loudly,
Shouted loudly, “That’ll show ‘em!”

Don’t Panic! (The Tom Ridge Song)

George said, “We need a homeland czar, can you come
   right away?”
Said I, “I’m glad to help you out, but must it be today?
I’ve got a lot to do right here in Harrisburg, PA:
A dairy fair, a scrapple bill, and subsidies for hay;
I think I need two weeks, or maybe three: how would that
   be?”
The prexy said, “Ol’ Tom, that’s just why you’re the man for
   me!”

        (Chorus:)
        ‘Cause you don’t panic! You’re not volcanic!
           You sure don’t have much zing,
           It’s pure serenity you bring.
        You’re just not manic! You ain’t galvanic!
           And that’s by far the most important thing.


When I got to D.C., I charmed ‘em with my savoir-faire;
My manicure was flawless and my wardrobe debonaire.
While Tommy Thompson played the ass, I kept my choppers
   shut.
The House was scared of getting anthrax from a paper cut;
While all those Congressmen wimped out and scampered
   from the town,
I calmly changed my shirt (I always wear them buttoned
   down).

        (Chorus:)
        ‘Cause I don’t panic! I’m not volcanic!
           I sure don’t have much zing,
           It’s pure serenity I bring.
        I’m just not manic! I ain’t galvanic!
           And that’s by far the most important thing.


The people were concerned about their safety in the air;
We started random searches, even grannies: only fair.
The bins filled up with contraband, the guards were on the
   ball:
Nail clippers, knitting needles, plastic forks: we got ‘em all.
A cry went up to put air marshals on each plane somehow:
Said I (I’m so unflappable), “We’re all air marshals now.”

        (Chorus)


Now anthrax has all gone away; I didn’t have to budge.
It won’t be coming back, it seems (as best as I can judge).
When people started fretting ‘bout the Games in Salt Lake
   town,
I said, “We can’t make promises” and that sure calmed ‘em
   down.
A young Osama wannabe flew right into a bank:
Said I, “He’s not a terrorist, with such a little tank.”

        (Chorus)


I go to lots of meetings and I build bureaucracy;
The more we sit in offices, the more security.
From me the people of this land will rarely hear a peep:
I wouldn’t want to say a thing that might disturb their sleep.
My soporific policy is working as it ought:
The nation’s doing fine while I’m not doing diddly-squat.

        (Chorus)

If My Grocery Store Wrote Me
As My Old College Does

We opened new vistas to you long ago.
New shoppers are here; can you help them today?
Please send us a gift to allow us to grow.

Remember when you didn’t know of Bordeaux?
Of sourdough bread glistening with salmon pâté?
We opened new vistas to you long ago.

We’re happy to welcome our new CEO;
He’s got our big fundraising drive underway:
Please send us a gift to allow us to grow.

How did you survive before deli to go?
Imagine your life without fresh crème brûlée!
We opened new vistas to you long ago.

We’d like the support of a check apropos;
We need to defray a new produce display:
Please send us a gift to allow us to grow.

The cost of radicchio’s rising, you know;
You don’t want your store to become déclassé:
We opened new vistas to you long ago;
Please send us a gift to allow us to grow.

Tunku Varadarajan’s Exquisite Stomach

“Worst of all, however—and I steel myself against
sentimentality here—were the ‘Portraits of Grief,’
miniprofiles of the victims of Sept. 11, which usually took up
the last page or two of the section. These portraits—no
doubt well-intentioned—were quite, quite indigestible. ...
I think less gush, more gray, more solemnity, less
minihagiography would have conferred infinitely more
dignity on the dead than the saccharine-and-molasses
thumbnail sketches that were inflicted on us every morning.
... The profiles, most of all, suggested that the Times was
not, for once, the paper of record; instead, it was the paper
of mawkish sentiment. The memory of the dead was done a
ghastly, cloying disservice.”
  — Tunku Varadarajan, “My Patience Challenged,” 1/8/02




When facing numbing tragedy,
How nice if all of us could be
Well bred to such a high degree
As is the precious Mr. V.
Come, let’s all strive to see if we
Can be as good and gray as he.

Hey, you there, at that Irish wake:
Be quieter as you undertake!
Have ye not heard what Tunku spake?
Your revelry you must forsake
And solemn be, for pity sake,
Or T. will get a stomachache.

You Baptists, too: you must curtail
Your tendency to weep and wail
When friends of yours depart this vale;
Such conduct is beyond the pale:
It causes Tunku much travail
And agitates his tummy frail.

Let everyone throughout the land
Now join in this sublime command:
You ghastly, cloying gush: be banned!
You mawkish sentiment: get canned!
Our Tunku’s fine digestive gland
Requires a diet much more bland.

Heather Mallick, Heather Mallick

“I have been silent for months now as we have all attended
our American-run obedience school. Columnists wrote with
a straight face that ‘we are all Americans now’ and must rally
in the face of the enemy (‘Let's roll,’ George W. Bush said,
but he meant ‘Let's roll over’ for an authoritarian
government). For years, the right wing blathered on about
the nanny state. But how they love the nanny when she
changes sex, slips on a uniform and comes for undesirable
elements in the night.”
                                       — Heather Mallick, 12/29/01



Heather Mallick, Heather Mallick,
Do you have a hole cephalic?
Is your cranium still clicking?
Have your brain cells ceased their ticking?
Are your neurons all a-twisty?
Is your vision foggy, misty?
Is your mind becoming cloudy
From your efforts to be Dowd-y?

Mallick, Heather, Mallick, Heather,
Has your reason slipped its tether?
Though I’ve looked in nooks and crannies,
I can’t find the jackboot nannies.
I don’t see the thugs transvestite.
I don’t hear the knock at midnight.
Could it be that fascist nation
Lives in your imagination?

Mallick, Mallick, Heather, Heather,
Do you ever wonder whether
All your flights of prose so prancy
End up in the land of fancy?
While you’re busy Globe and Mailing,
Does your common sense go sailing?
Is your wit, so saucy, tempty,
Used for purposes quite empty?

The Confessions of Mr. Jonathan Franzen,
Celebrated Author of The Corrections

I’m different from most of the people I know:
I’m better, I’m finer, and that’s comme il faut.
The highbrow-lit life is perfection for me:
I love to épater that damn bourgeoisie.

It’s my sacred mission: I constantly sneer
At all of those things smaller people hold dear.
American culture’s so shoddy, you know;
Why, all of the people who count think it so.

Take TV, for instance: so banal and trite,
A high-culture guy finds it all such a blight.
I shudder to think of those uncultured rubes
All over the country, all staring at tubes.

When Oprah called, tell me, what was I to do?
I couldn’t just lie and say, “I love you, too.”
I mumbled, “OK, sure, yeah, maybe, perhaps,”
While thinking, “Could we keep this all under wraps?”

My high-minded scruples kept gnawing at me:
What would my friends think of me on the TV?
That big “O” for “Oprah” all over my book:
Is that how a high-lit boy’s big book should look?

I wanted (as usual) to have it both ways:
I did it by showing a certain malaise
At the prospect of marring my high-lit cachet
By mingling with morons on O’s matinee.

I had to mine ownself be true, quoth-unquoth:
I took all the money and flouted it, both.
For high-lit gents, that’s the appropriate pose:
Scoop up all the lucre while holding your nose.

Just look at me now: I’m a best-selling snob!
The money rolls in while I sneer at the mob.
I’m already writing my next deathless work:
What You Take As a Smile Is Really a Smirk.

Theories

“Conspiracy theories are funny things: the wackier they
sound, the more likely they are to be true.”
                                                   — Ted Rall, 1/9/02



It’s always those big clown-nosed conspiracies,
The ones way out there in the wild blue,
Dropping loose screws and tooting calliopes,
That are just the ones most likely to be true.

If a theory features blueberry ragout
And some Nixon clones growing in a tank
In a secret Nazi outpost in Peru,
You can step right out and take it to the bank.

When it’s all about a submarine that sank
After finally finding Nessie in her loch,
To ensure some Spanish admiral kept his rank,
It could absolutely never be a crock.

And yet I can’t get round a stumbling block:
One wacky theory isn’t worth two cents:
If it were proven true, oh! what a shock:
That Rall could write a sentence that made sense.

The Duty That Comes of Love Sustains

(For the heroes of Flight 93)

Can we know what the heart of each contains
When terror replaces the life of mirth?
The duty that comes of love sustains.

The hate-spawned fanatics on the planes
Are bent on creating a hell on earth.
Who knows what the heart of each contains?

The blood pounds like poison in the veins
Of passengers frozen in each soft berth.
The duty that comes of love sustains.

They all take a vote; no one abstains.
They’re ready to fight for a greater worth.
They know what the heart of each contains.

Some talk to their families; none complains.
A resolute beauty has had its birth.
The duty that comes of love sustains.

All hope of survival quickly wanes;
The plane hurtles down to meet the earth.
We know what the heart of each contains:
The duty that comes of love sustains.

The Global Warming Song

The troops environmental were all feeling quite depressed:
It looked as if their favorite doomsdays all had failed the test.
Forget about the New Ice Age, deforestation too.
What was a good environmentalist supposed to do?

      Global warming! Global warming!
      It’s going to be so frightening
      As the Fahrenheit keeps heightening!
      Global warming! Global warming!
      This time there’s not a chance they could be wrong.

So many of the scary things had simply failed to come;
The world perversely failed to drown in its effluvium.
The streams got cleaner year by year, the lakes came back
   from dead.
What could the greenies think of that would fill us all with
   dread?

      Global warming! Global warming!
      The planet’s getting roasted
      And we’re gonna all get toasted!
      Global warming! Global warming!
      This time there’s not a chance they could be wrong.

The spray cans won’t destroy the Earth, the ozone belt's
   unmussed.
Midwesterners don’t choke in soot, their rivers don't
   combust.
The New Dust Bowl was never seen, the topsoil stayed
   somehow.
What could a good environmentalist believe in now?

      Global warming! Global warming!
      Our nasty carbon crud’ll
      Turn the Arctic to a puddle!
      Global warming! Global warming!
      This time there’s not a chance they could be wrong.

The scientists keep saying that it’s true beyond a doubt;
Their models are so perfect, if you question them they pout.
Their posture seems to harden as their data seem to melt.
Is this the kind of science that’s not thought as much as felt?

      Global warming! Global warming!
      The scientists are certain,
      Don’t go look behind that curtain!
      Global warming! Global warming!
      This time there’s not a chance they could be wrong.

But put away your doubts and let’s just all get on the team:
The greenies are extremely short with those who dare
   blaspheme.
So throw away that mower and shut down all those
   drive-thrus:
We’ve got a world to save, just an economy to lose!

      Global warming! Global warming!
      Don’t do no barbecuin’
      Or for sure we’ll all be stewin’!
      Global warming! Global warming!
      This time there’s not a chance they could be wrong.

The Rock from Mars

You see this rock? Come here, come nigh!
This rock from Mars to Earth did fly!
Its Martian bug tracks you will see
If you examine carefully.
What’s that? You seem to look askance.
I am not wrong, there is no chance.
Its story cannot be surpassed:
I’ll tell it now, from first to last.

When Sol’s domain was newly lit
This rock on Martian soil did sit.
Sweet Martian water bathed its mass;
It may have lain on Martian grass!
And little Martian bugs did flit
Around and through and under it.

And then one day from out the void
There came a wandering asteroid.
It blundered into Mars, and hit
Just where our little rock did sit.
It whomped so hard our rock did fly
Up high into the Martian sky.

And then that rock, you might well think,
Back to the Martian ground did sink.
But no, it did not Marsward fall!
It did not fall, no, not at all.
That whomp had knocked the rock, you see,
At just the right trajectory
And fast enough velocity
To slip the tug of gravity;
The rock flew up, away from Mars,
To wander out toward the stars.

Now space is big, and space is vast,
And so the long millennia passed
With little chance the traveler would
Come calling in Earth’s neighborhood.
And yet it did! It bore right down
On noble Earth’s celestial crown!
What’s that you say? You doubt it would?
The odds of that are none too good?
That such a thing could ever be
Would strain a babe’s credulity?
And so it might, but who are we
To wonder at fortuity?

But then another challenge came
To our rock’s journey into fame,
For hurtling through the Earth’s dense air
Must, then as now, have bidden fair
To turn the little rock from Mars
To one of Earth’s bright shooting stars.
No human now can surely say
How it survived that threatful day.
Perhaps it bigger was than now;
It clearly got to Earth somehow.

Yet still our rock had one more chance
To fall away from human glance,
For chances then were two of three
That it would fall into the sea.
But once again its aim was true;
It fell not in the briny blue;
It fell on land, it nestled nice
Amid the stark Antarctic ice.

It sat there as the ages passed.
It sat there all alone. At last,
Some scientific mavens came
In search of funding and acclaim,
And one of them our rock bespied,
And with a Nobel dream he cried,
“It came from Mars, I do not doubt!”
“It did! From Mars!” came back the shout.

Amazing story, don’t you think?
Amazing how I know each link.
And most amazing of it all
Is how the people in its thrall
Will boost the funding, you will see,
That flows into our agency.
And funding boosts the rockets high;
The astronauts will pierce the sky;
They’ll carry with them lots of jars
For filling up with rocks from Mars.