Such a Disagreeable Man

(With thanks and apologies to W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan)



My legacy needs tending, so I travel round the world:
The banner of philanthropy I always fly unfurled.
I teach my people history they really ought to know,
While guiding foreign policy in ways it ought to go.
I gaze into the future—I’m a quite astounding seer;
I’ve a sweet and even temper that is quite without a peer.
I love my fellow creatures—I do all the good I can—
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
          And I can’t think why!

I enrich the public discourse from the coffers of my mind;
I engage in worthy labors of a literary kind.
I do everything I can to further needy charities;
I am happy to support my country’s sportsmen overseas.
Through my efforts, scores of waiters are secure in their
   employ;
With my daughter, I share family times that both of us
   enjoy.
But to benefit humanity however much I plan,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
          And I can’t think why!

Daniel Pearl, R.I.P.

They have killed again, the cruel lost men.
Our tears well up to meet the day.
A man has been killed by beasts again.

This time they chose a man of the pen,
For they war with truth every day.
A man has been killed by beasts again.

A brave man walked into the vipers’ den,
Serving truth as he did every day,
Servant in the league of truth-seeking men.

Brave and gentle men will seek truth again,
Will win its battles in future day.
Truth cannot be killed by cruel lost men.

Action Men

“At his briefing yesterday, a reporter said she wanted to
ask Donald Rumsfeld a question on a ‘touchy-feely’ topic
and he cut her off with laughter, looking at the general to
his side, and saying, ‘You've come to the wrong guys.’
Note the trend: The American flag is back. The military-
industrial complex is back. And testosterone is back.
No more Me Decade. No more We Decade. No more Re
Decade. This is the He Decade.”
                                               — Jeff Jarvis, 2/13/02




The most valiant of boys savor newly won joys,
   They’re the object of all celebration.
Our adventurous men have fresh place in our ken,
   In the glow of our keen admiration.

Was there really a time when the prevalent clime
   Shied from maleness in most of its facets?
When the boldest of lads were suspected as cads,
   Were considered as plagues and not assets?

In a world gone so weird, action men often feared
   Their high spirits would get them in trouble
With the anti-guy crew (there were more than a few)
   If they didn’t climb down on the double.

Then the world changed again as we saw the brave men
   Climb those stairs, filled with courage and duty.
In an instant we knew what was false, what was true,
   In our shock at their valorous beauty.

There’s good reason for cheer in this world we hold dear,
   Which loves men and is not shy to show them,
As the action men all proudly answer the call
   Of a nation now grateful to know them.

The Champions of Reform

There’s a bill that’s advancing through Congress today
That at first glance may seem just a nonsense display;
Though widely regarded as botched, and that’s earned,
A certain consistency can be discerned.
I refer to the “campaign finance reform” plan
That’s pushed by the Shays, Meehan, et cetera clan.
Those worthies like posing as solons of pluck
Who neutrally want to clean out all the muck.
   If principles neutral have all of them guided,
   Why are the effects of reform so one-sided?

When Congress gives evil “soft money” the ax,
Political money will flow more to PACs.
Reformers of old said that PACs were all bad,
So why will they now make them prosper like mad?
A decade ago, “PACs” meant businesses big;
“Soft money” is now the main corporate gig.
It seems that the point isn’t softness or PAC,
But making big businesses sit in the back.
   To reformers, “corruption” just means that they see
   Some political acts with which they disagree.

Restrictions on campaign ads surely offend
First Amendment protections that courts will not bend.
One thought that reformers were always in awe
Of that noblest of columns supporting our law.
   One must think that its value is harder to see
   When it’s used in some ways with which they disagree.

As long as the government still has the power
To make certain businesses prosper or cower,
Those businesses will find it prudent to offer
To pols a percentage of what’s in their coffer.
So those who sincerely want cleanup, you’d think,
Should favor some moves to make government shrink.
That’s not what you find: the plan’s friends are all those
Who think government’s better the more that it grows.
   Is their cleanup intent to make D.C. muck-free
   Or to cleanse it of that with which they disagree?

“A Low Dishonest Decade”

Now we have had our own low dishonest
Decade, Auden, punctuated like yours
With sudden thunder at its end, and our
Thunder also rumbled before the clap,
For those not unacquainted with this world
And its ways, who know negligence has costs,
Fecklessness is rarely given a free pass,
And accounts always balance in the end,
Who muttered “No good will come of this”
As they watched him of whom poets had warned,
The hollow man, the man without qualities,
Use office to sate his insatiable
Appetites, to soothe his yawning emptiness
With cheers and cheap applause and seductions,
As they saw his laughing harpies frozen
In midjump on the White House bed, happy
To show the world their ironic and carefree,
Their bouyant irresponsibility,
As they heard the preening narcissist
Bemoan his ill fortune in lacking
A crisis worthy of his mettle
To show all the world his true greatness,
As they wondered, Where were the gatekeepers?
The mandarins of our new meritocracy,
Who might have kept the man in Little Rock
Where he could have done minor damage only,
As they realized the mandarins were
Bowing down before a grid of circles
Made with no. 2 pencils and a stack
Of glibly articulate five-page papers
While not noticing such unimportant
Personal details as a void within:
No, to those who could hear the rumbling
The sudden clap at the end was not
Altogether a complete surprise.

My Little Suckerfish

(To the tune of “My Funny Valentine,” by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart)


“The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that
federal biologists had no scientific justification for their
efforts to protect endangered fish by withholding water
from farmers in the drought-ravaged Klamath Basin of
the Pacific Northwest last year, a potentially explosive
development in the nation's most intense environmental
battle. In a 26-page report ..., the academy directly
contradicted the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National
Marine Fisheries Service, arguing that there was ‘no
substantial scientific foundation’ for its April 2001 rulings
that the basin's federal irrigation project was threatening
the survival of rare suckerfish and salmon.”
                                       — Washington Post, 2/4/02



(Verse)

Of all the things that swim, crawl, or fly,
I’ve had the joyous luck
To fall in love with one special guy
Who wriggles in the muck.
Your eating habits make you a creep,
Some people do lament;
To me you are the top of the heap
Of piscene wonderment—you’re ...


(Refrain)

My little suckerfish,
You are my dearest fish,
You and I will never part.
Don’t care what scientists say,
They’ve never seen the way
You looked at me and stole my heart.
I will never let a judge
Rule that he can make you budge
From your home in bottom sludge—
Don’t depart!
It could never be a crime
To stay in bed of slime,
Stay, little suckerfish, stay!
We’ll just get farmers to pay.

I Wish I Were a Rad Again

(To the tune of “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart)



(Verse)

I was once a happy rad,
Young and tender-hearted.
I was once a left-wing lad,
But one day we parted.
Leftishness is through,
I’m on the right.
Now I fight what I adored.
I was once not quite so bored.


(Refrain 1)

A pose humane,
A smear campaign,
The ecstasy of feeling someone else’s pain,
The lack of a connection ‘tween your mouth and brain—
I wish I were a rad again!
The writing trite,
The thinking slight,
The effortless assumption that you’re in the right,
The looking down on others from a giddy height—
I wish I were a rad again!
Left no more,
Know the score,
I deplore sham ...
But I miss all the flimflam!
I don’t demur
To disinter
Those glory days when leftishness was de rigueur.
Now everything’s so normal and I wish I were
A rad again!


(Refrain 2)

The left-wing guilt,
The theories built,
The wackiness of living on a cockeyed tilt,
The mind a jolly jumble like a patchwork quilt—
I wish I were a rad again!
The heartstrings plucked,
The duties ducked,
The joy of lit as but a thing to deconstruct,
The dream that Western Civ was set on “self-destruct”—
I wish I were a rad again!
Now I know
What is so,
I forego pink ...
But I miss all that clink-think!
You may infer
That I prefer
That comfortable condition when the mind’s a blur:
I'm tired of thinking and I wish I were
A rad again!


Update: Revised on 2/16/02 to replace “Dem” with “rad” throughout
and make other minor changes to capture more accurately the object
of my lampoon. On consideration, I realize that “Dem” sweeps more
broadly than I intended. I had in mind what might be called the
loony left-Berkeley wing of the party, and of course the Democratic
Party includes many people who are not in that wing. My
reconsideration was prompted in part by a critical comment by
Thomas Nephew on his Newsrack blog, for which I thank him.

The Lady in the Harbor

(For Emma Lazarus)


“The goal ... should be to assure that immigrants have the
skills and education that is [sic] needed to find work that will
allow them to assimilate into the American middle class. Our
efforts toward establishing a permanent high-wage, high-
skills economy require that we change current policies toward
both legal and illegal immigration to decrease the unthinking
intake of poorly skilled and poorly educated who will only
cope at the margins of our economy—and then often in
competition for scarce entry-level jobs with America's native-
born poor.”
    — Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)



Do wretchedness and yearning still suffice?
Does the Lady in the harbor yet smile
On applicants who have no skills on file?
Do empty-handed masses still entice?
Are the refuse still invited in?
Do lowly birth and dreams still recommend?
Do crude, unpolished manners now offend?
Does patient gaze still see beneath the skin?
Is the lamp now too feeble to reveal
The virtues of the tempest-tost, the poor?
Do superficial aspects now conceal
The truths that humble eyes could see before?
Do silent lips still cry that same appeal
To those who see her lamp beside the door?

Isadore the Cowboy

“Supporters of the hyper-immigration we are now receiving
like to claim that we should not be concerned about it,
because it is no worse than the ‘Great Wave’ of immigration
at the turn of the last century. But in fact, because times
have changed greatly in the last one hundred years,
immigration now is much more out-of-sync with our country's
needs than it was at the turn of the last century. ... During
those frontier days, we had a vast empty country and
states starved for people: ‘After the Civil War, practically all
the states and territories west of the Mississippi River
encouraged immigration. They set up immigration bureaus
and put advertisements in western European newspapers
telling the advantages of settling in their areas.’”
    — Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)





The Irish couldn’t stand to stay in Boston:
To eastern urban life they weren’t inclined;
They all decamped for Boise or for Austin
To find the Big Sky life for which they pined.

We found we couldn’t keep our new Italians
In crowded, stinking cities like New York;
They much preferred to ride those bucking stallions
Or live in western Kansas raising pork.

The Poles refused to settle in Chicago:
They shuddered at the racket of the El;
They upped and scooted westerly quite pronto,
Where quiet, starry skies could weave their spell.

We’ve all heard tell of Isadore the Cowboy,
Who drove them dogies all across the range;
For Jews, the urban places were a killjoy:
They all became proud members of the Grange.

Today, alas, we lack such destination:
The open, empty West is now no more.
It’s plain there’s no more room for immigration:
Hey, someone hang that “Closed” sign on the door!

Oops! It’s the Euro

(To the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”)


Old Europe’s suffered too much from war,
   Pure carnage since the crossbow,
In future we don’t want all that gore.
   Oops! It’s the Euro.

      We’re not quite sure how peace will be won
         From unitary cash flow,
      But we’re resolved to give it a run.
         Oops! It’s the Euro.

The bureaucrats at EU HQ
   Are kindly masters who know
What’s best for every me and you.
   Oops! It’s the Euro.

      The Germans are so good at “das Geld,”
         So patient and so thorough,
      The D-Mark’s value never did melt.
         Oops! It’s the Euro.

We’ll just ignore that money in Greece
   To work well must be priced low
Compared to money used in Nice.
   Oops! It’s the Euro.

      The Brussels crew are sure of their plan
         And they could not be wrong, so
      Let’s toss those pounds right into the can.
         Oops! It’s the Euro.