Not This Time

“There will be no second Holocaust.”
          — The great Victor Davis Hanson, 3/18/02




No more little girls hiding in attics,
No human ash chimneys working round the clock,
No more death dreams from eager fanatics,
No ferret-faced bureaucrats in the dock.

Other horrors may come, but not that one.
No Islamic Hitler will get his cue.
There will be no genocidal rerun;
We’ve been there before, and it’s through.

Stifle your yearning for pre-’48,
Put into-the-sea dreams with the fairy tales.
Your troubles will find no balm in hate:
No Holocaust allowed to soothe what ails.

Not concerned with what Allah wants or doesn’t,
Don’t care what it says in your holy text,
Doesn’t matter if your sad story was or wasn’t.
Don’t try it: you won’t like what comes next.

As the Appliances Drone and Hiccup

“The Madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming
through. You could feel it: something terrible was going
to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling
star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless,
temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of
things coming to an end. No children in the yards here.
Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks
and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on
houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered
in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a
clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the
ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the
gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the
paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love
seat.”
— First paragraph of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen




The first sentence grabs you like a crazy, toothless crone
Who won’t let go: meteorological madness!
Delphic gusts of chaos blow fear in the bone.
This is no ordinary midwestern wind, that’s for sure,
The kind into which an ordinary midwesterner might bend
And think no more than “Stiff wind—a real blaster.”
No, this Franzen wind carries not weather but disaster:
The whole northern religion of things is coming to an end.
(Not sure what that means; don’t quite comprehend:
Never heard of a wind blowing down a whole religion,
Let alone a whole religion of things.
But I will be patient: all will come clear in the end.)

“Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia”:
Note the masterstroke: zoysia.
Nothing so mundane in FranzenLand as grass.
You can hear the men talking in that northern clime:
“Hey, Clem: your zoysia’s gettin’ a mite long, friend.”
“I know, Bob, I’m gonna have to mow that zoysia soon.
Not today, though; I don’t have time;
The missus has Gallus domesticus for evening repast.
Maybe tomorrow afternoon,
After our whole northern religion of things comes to an end.”
“Yeah, you should have plenty of free time then.”

Such an eerie otherness—such a refreshing gloom!—
This would-be American scene has:
This shuddering, childless, mortgage-free, doomed
America with its rude personified appliances,
Dying in the light of a dying star.
What lies behind those shuddering windows?
What unspeakable crimes have been done, and still are,
By the soulless creatures who paid off those mortgages?
What torments did those affluent midwesterners inflict
On a certain young novelist-to-be?
Sing to me, O Franzen! Tell me yet more:
Of the catarrhous croup of a lawn mower,
The angry dissonant burping of a bee,
And the sibilant whisperings of a car
With only three more payments left on it.

If Gray Davis Wrote a Villanelle

(On March 9, 2002, the San Diego Union-Tribune published
an interview with California’s Democratic governor and
gubernatorial candidate, Gray Davis, conducted by the
Union-Tribune’s editorial board. What follows are some of
Davis’s comments, edited and arranged into the form of a
villanelle. All the words are Davis’s, except that the
sentences ending in question marks are paraphrases of
interviewers’ questions, and the phrase “as it ought” has
been added in the fourth stanza for the rhyme.)




I didn’t moan and groan. I didn’t say “Woe is me.”
I kept the lights on. I should get applause. I don’t get squat.
This is like a war. This is a full-out war against me.

I didn’t deserve the mess I inherited in energy.
People say I blew the contracts? They don’t know squat.
I didn’t moan and groan. I didn’t say “Woe is me.”

I’m delighted that people are now seeing the duplicity
That Enron practiced because Enron was the best of the lot.
This is like a war. This is a full-out war against me.

I explained time and again, we shouldn’t be slaves to a
     theory.
I said this is a theory, it is not working as it ought.
I didn’t moan and groan. I didn’t say “Woe is me.”

Simon’s win due to me? I don’t vote in the Republican primary.
Do I have qualms about all the money I’m raising? Absolutely
     not.
This is like a war. This is a full-out war against me.

I got the job done. People just roundly criticize me.
I rolled up my sleeves. I kept the lights on. I don’t get squat.
I didn’t moan and groan. I didn’t say “Woe is me.”
This is like a war. This is a full-out war against me.

Daniel Henninger’s Exquisite Stomach

“Why we should have a six-month commemoration of
September 11 is not entirely clear to me ... We here in
New York focused on Ground Zero, and it was a nicely
rendered event, with many people professing to be
touched by the two blue lights whose particles will now
stand in awhile for 220 floors of humanity. It is hard
not to be touched. One should be touched. And yet if
you watched much of the New York TV coverage of the
event, it was hard not to hear ‘remember’ and ‘never
forget’ and ‘we all’ said so often that beyond some
point you began to seek stations on which you would
be unlikely to hear these words. As always, this sense
that one is being drugged with maudlin self-absorption
is what television does to us, or nearly any tragic
thing it touches. One wonders if the many schools of
communications now outputting these people into
our living rooms offer semester-long courses in such
subjects as Onscreen Empathy or Tonalizing Sincerity,
because the tinge of staginess in these voices is
really hard to miss, and even harder, as with anything
too sweet, to stomach. One at times wished for more
of the emotional diffidence or distancing one sees in
foreign broadcasts on C-SPAN.”
    — Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 3/15/02



Another Journal writer thinks it meet
To tell us that our mourning’s much too sweet.
One wonders if the Journal runs a school
Where Haughty Rudeness courses are the rule,
Where students learn to strike that charming pose
Of leaning back while peering down the nose.
Is The Exquisite Stomach required there?
Does the Professor of Sneering have a chair?
Perhaps Recoiling From the Masses is taught,
Or Making the Vulgar Mourn As They Ought.

Johnny Walker Lindh Sulayman
Al-Lindh Abdul Hamid’s Song

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




When I was a lad in fair Marin,
I was the nicest child there’s ever been;
I always listened to what grown-ups said
So that I could learn to grow up in a way well bred.
     I learned so well the ways of my clan
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

I was taught that I should not bemoan
Any country in the world—except my own,
And the truest patriotic way
Was to criticize incessantly the U.S.A.
     My patriotic feelings grew so spick-and-span
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

In the tolerant precincts I was in,
To be judgmental was the greatest sin,
Except that Western culture’s weight
Was the only thing that people shouldn’t tolerate.
     My tolerance of others reached so wide a span
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

I was taught to abhor all selfish greed,
And that people should be given all the things they need.
As an idealistic youth I swore
That I'd always do my level best to help the poor.
     I was filled with such love for my fellow man
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

When I grew to a teen, I was perplexed,
But then I read a book about Malcom X,
That lively story of his quest and pain
Made a notable impression on my eager brain.
     Of Malcom X I became such a fan
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

I soon became a Muslim true,
And reading the Koran was all I cared to do;
My other interests I soon forsook
And I vowed to memorize the whole enormous book.
     I fell so in love with my Koran
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

And then to Yemen I took a trip,
‘Cause there they spoke Arabic without a slip;
Then on to Pakistan to school,
Where I learned about the Taliban in old Kabul.
     I was so intrigued with Afghanistan
     That I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

From Marin to Kabul might seem bizarre,
But the distance that’s between them isn’t all that far;
I fit right in every step of the way,
From my first important lessons until yesterday.
     I followed my drummer from the time I began,
     And I ended up a soldier of the Taliban.

A Supple Stance

(For Virginia Postrel)


“Ten years ago, in the economic boom after German
reunification, nothing seemed capable of stopping this
country. Now, nothing seems capable of starting it up. ...
Germany's long-term pattern resembles a much milder
version of the stagnation Japan is going through—
economic anemia at home, unhealthy dependence on
exports, a paralyzing culture of consensus decision-
making and an inability to carry out much-needed financial
and economic changes. ... ‘Everyone is looking for
security, security, security,’ said Manfred Wittenstein,
owner of Wittenstein G.m.b.H., which makes motors for
automated machinery. German job-protection rules remain
rigid, discouraging companies from hiring full-time
employees. Many stores close at 2 p.m. on Saturday,
and most do not open on Sunday. Ordinary discounts
are illegal, the notion being that they might confuse
consumers.”
                              — New York Times, 2/28/02


“The U.S. economy appears to be steaming out of
recession, confounding broad-based expectations of a
languid recovery and benefiting from a new flexibility
woven into its fabric over the last decade. ... [A]
fundamental change could be under way. At the heart of
the argument is a belief that the economy has become
more flexible. Manufacturers are quicker to adjust their
inventories and labor forces to sales fluctuations.
Financial markets are better able to parcel out risk.”
                              — Wall Street Journal, 3/4/02



The sailor’s success is in the rising sun,
Whose warmth gives life to the breeze,
And in the swelling of the seas,
Pulled by the moon on its distant run.
A king who cries halt to the tide is undone;
Waves must be ridden for prize to be won.

In getting and spending, men often think
They can do what they can’t to the tide:
Find an unchanging place to hide,
From there to secure their food and drink.
But poverty will find those who shrink
From change; a supple stance makes coffers clink.

Life’s ebb and flow will not stop at the sound
Of the timorous ones’ call
For security above all;
To this rule of nature they too are bound:
Life gains more power the more it goes round;
Riches in stasis will never be found.

Where Are the Heathers of Yesteryear?

(With apologies to François Villon)



“Alpha girls ruthlessly rule junior high school, a la ‘Heathers,’
with cold shoulders, hot clothes and withering looks known
as ‘deaths,’ jettisoning pathetic Wannabees from their
popular Queen Bee cliques. ... In The Washington Post,
Laura Sessions Stepp described three groups: alphas,
stars who define teen life and determine who will be
excluded; betas, who worry that they're not in the in crowd;
and gammas, student council president types who care
more about what they do than how they appear. But here
is what puzzles me: If schools are overrun with alpha girls,
why isn't America run by alpha women? ... Professional
alpha women are an endangered species. Over and over,
you see alpha males, who would otherwise be plotting to
crush one another, forming alliances to crush the uppity
alpha woman in their midst. The corporate culture is still
reeking of testosterone. ... Could it be that alpha men do
not want to share their alpha zone with alpha women?
Could it be that they don't want women to challenge them,
question them or, heaven forbid, outmaneuver them? Could
it be that they prefer the less competitive and more
appreciative company of beta, gamma and va-voom girls?”
   — Maureen Dowd, “Mean, Nasty and Missing,” 2/27/02



Alpha girl, her withering looks
Tossing social death, prowls the school
With a fierce ruthlessness that brooks
No gainsaying her haughty rule.
Who can resist her mockings cruel,
Her perfect sweaters of cashmere,
Her tight enforcement of the cool?
Where are the Heathers of yesteryear?

What could defeat her scornful glare?
Who sits now in her accustomed place—
A dweebish grind with tacky hair?
How came gammas from youth’s disgrace
To win first place in grown-up’s race?
How could wonkish quest for career
Best silky tresses and made-up face?
Where are the Heathers of yesteryear?

Mo knows how: it’s all that bad old
Conspiracy of testosterone:
Those swinish men keep lady bold
Outside the happy alpha zone.
Stylish gal can’t be beaten alone:
The louts ally to cheat her, it’s clear,
And keep her from her rightful throne.
Where are the Heathers of yesteryear?

Maureen, as you suffer the pain
Of serious times on frivolous career,
Keep in mind this mournful refrain:
Where are the Heathers of yesteryear?