one of my favoite poems.

and you did a brilliant job with it!
WOW!

BTW: i think there is something very DORIAN GRAY-esque about Kerry and other old New Leftist's refusal to accept that they were wrong and Reagan/Thatcher/Hayek right.

and that we live in a post-vietnam/post-ussr/post watergate world. a world i which hayek and reagan are more inmportant and useful than Marx, McGovern and Jimmy Carter.

right after 9/11 i felt the left would put aside their ideology until we won the war.

but they cannot. WHY?

Because it would mean admitting they were wrong all along.

That would be like taking a knife to the "dorian gray-like" portrait of themselves which keeps them seemingly young. at least young-looking.

narcissism - as you have pointed out - is a major factor with the left.

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/200...nd- society.html

all the best!
reliapundit | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 12:11 pm | #

You've captured the essential Kerry. Or, rather Prufrock did!
Jan | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 1:44 pm | #

I am in awe.
neo-neocon | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 2:01 pm | #

I would agree with neo-neocon except for me it would be an understatement.
GM Roper | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 3:12 pm | #

LOL brilliant!
Deborah | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 3:27 pm | #

How are you able to do this so regularly??? LOL
Junior | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 3:47 pm | #

Haw! We loved it.

Neither of us can figure out how to do trackbacks, but Dymphna gave you a link here:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.co...-no- tongue.html
Baron Bodissey | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 4:13 pm | #

Kerry is deluded if he thinks he's
gonna run again. Sometime in the
near future, Hillary's going to
whisper in his ear..."Get lost,
you putz, I'm running."
Kestrel | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 5:55 pm | #

I have been only a moderate fan of your parodies -- or anyone's parodies -- but this one was inspired.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 5:58 pm | #

Excellent.

The Kerry Elliot connection was noticed even before the election. Here is a post I made in August 2004:

Kerry made his 4 months in Vietnam the centerpiece of the Democratic convention, glossed over his participation in V.V.A.W. and ignored 20 years in the US Senate. This was done deliberately so he could run to the middle. He has been running ads clipping his acceptance speech with guff about a strong military and strong alliances with France. The real issue is who is the real John Kerry? Was the convention John Kerry, the real John Kerry?

My own take on the convention is that the whole thing was phony as a three dollar bill. If the convention had reflected what was really on the delegates minds, they would have demanded immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, termination of American aid to Israel, war crimes trials for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and reparations.

But what about Kerry? Who is the real Kerry? Did the convention show the real John Kerry? or is the real John Kerry the guy who was the V.V.A.W. mouthpiece, who threw somebody's medals or ribbons over the fence and who in a twenty year Senate career has earned highest marks from the ADA while accomplishing almost nothing?

I think most Republicans would like to run against the hard core leftist. But I don't think it's that simple.

I think the real John Kerry is nothing. He is hollow on the inside. He has no core. He has only ambition. He marries for money and social status. He adopts politics for temporary advantage. The accident of his initials gave shape to his military career (thus the choice of the Navy, volunteer for the swift boat, buy the movie camera, hope to star in his own personal PT109) and his route to the senate. When he got back from Viet Nam, the wind was blowing out of the other quarter. Easy, join V.V.A.W., throw medals (not your own they might come in handy later) go back to Massachusetts and do what ever Teddy Kennedy does.

Look at the way he handled the primaries. Dean picks up momentum as the "anti-war candidate." Kerry, who had said it would be wildly irresponsible to vote against the Iraq funding bill, votes against it to cut Dean off.

Why are the Swift Boat guys after Kerry. You may if you wish impugn their motives or you can pull Karl Rove out of the magician's hat, or you can claim Bush put them up to it (on those days when you don't think he is too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time). My guess, and I don't know any of them, is that they are angry, they are angry at John Kerry because they believe that he is a user who used them, they are angry at the media who defamed then in the 1970's, they are angry at the liberals who have indicted them as war criminals and baby killers (based in part on John Kerry's testimony) and convicted
them without ever giving them a chance to defend themselves; and this anger has festered with compound interest for a generation. They see their fathers lionized as the greatest generation, their children sent to Iraq with respect and the first member of their generation to be lauded is the one who betrayed them. Lord that must hurt.

If I were in their shoes, I would write a book if I had to do it longhand, and I would make sure the word got out if had to stand on street corners and shout. If I went to Rove and he sent me to some guy in Texas with money and a publishing house in NYC so much the better. But my guess is that the CREP has had minimal contact with this.

Kerry's problem with the Swift Boat book is not that it makes him out to be a liar or a coward. But that it makes him out to be what he is, a hollow man.

Last spring I saw a Maureen Dowd column about Kerry. I quit reading MoDo a couple of years ago after Bush Derangement Syndrome crippled her. But that column contained a gem of a quote:

"It's not often that you get a presidential candidate to recite poetry to you, especially in a year when W. and J.F.K. are going macho a macho.

But there was Mr. Kerry flying from Boston to New Orleans on Friday, sipping tea for his hoarse throat and reeling off T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

"There are so many great lines in it," he said. " 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' 'Should I wear my trousers rolled?' 'Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets/The muttering retreats/Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells."

Then he started on "Gunga Din" and " 'talk o' gin and beer.'"

I thought that the following lines from Proofrock were a perfect motto for the Kerry campaign

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: I
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

===========================================

But Orrin Judd suggested that another Elliot poem would be more appropriate:

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.


A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

================================================

Of course the literary connection runs deeper than that. The rubric of the poem is from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which Francis Coppola filmed as "Apocalypse Now", which Kerry has worked into his personal narrative as his secret mission up the Mekong.

The thing about truth is that we can not stand it, we seem always to have to push our lives into the narratives we have heard of grander things, we never want to confront our own pettiness, our own selfishness our own errors -- our own humanity. The thing about great art, whether Elliot, Conrad or Coppola, is that it returns us always to the truth, to the heart of darkness.

The Swift Boat vets are laying him Kerry bare, not as a liar, not as a coward, but as a hollow man.

August 19, 2004 07:18 PM
Robert Schwartz | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 6:39 pm | #

You folk still all upset about Kerry, eh?

I don't know how to analyze this one except I think it's strange. Weird.
Raw Data | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 7:04 pm | #

We wouldn't be upset if he just went away. He's the gift that keeps on giving.
Junior | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 7:16 pm | #

Kerry's still smarter and a better man than the empty-suit asswipe you Red State assholes chose for president. You know that, too.
Billy Graham Cracker | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 9:29 pm | #

BGC- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you are funny. You would like to believe that wouldn't you? You would also like to believe that Kerry is smarter,but his grades at Yale weren't even as good as Bush's. Ouch.That must really hurt, huh?
Guyfromtoledo | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 9:58 pm | #

I wrote this before the election. Same idea, basically:

The Swan Song of J. Effin' Kerry

Let us go then, you and I,
And analyze this Kerry guy
Like a patient etherised upon a table.
Let us go if you are able.

Listen to his tedious arguments
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the hall politicians come and go
Speaking of things that happened long ago.

And indeed there will be time
There will be time to stall, equivocate,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for “you” and time for “y’all,”
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of another poll.

In the room the women came and went
Supporting their candidate for president.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
[But no one can deny I have great hair!]
My craggy face, my enormous chin,
My necktie rich and modest, no detail will be wrong-
They will say: “And how his arms and legs are strong!”

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:-
Have known the wise guys, idiots and dupes
I have measured out my life with focus groups;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all-
Arms with veins and liver spots
[But in the sunlight, covered with dark brown hair!]
It is money from a trust
That buries my disgust?

Should I, after spinal meningitis,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [with thick brown hair] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet-and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Roosevelt, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”-
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the lunches and the dinners with the assholes that you meet,
After the meetings, the phone calls, the bills that never make it to the floor-
And this, and so much more?-
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not a Kennedy, nor was meant to be;
Just a junior senator, one that will do
To attend a fundraiser, support a bill or two,
“Meet the Press;” no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall never make a statement that’s too bold.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear a stylish jogging suit and run upon the beach.
I have heard the rednecks speaking, each to each.
I do not think that they will vote for me.

I have seen them riding in their pickup truck
The wheel-wells full of southern rural muck
Thinking: Kerry and Edwards, they both suck.

We have satisfied our Democratic base
Labor, East Coast, Hollywood and Jews
But November 3 will surely dawn, and we will lose.
Carl O. Witz | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 10:22 pm | #

Great poem. For another view of the good ship Kerry, I invite you to watch both the Michael Connelly and Ken Cordier videos on the pointsandviews.com website. For me, it was enlightening.

Bill Force
bill force | Email | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 11:56 pm | #

...it occurs to me how singularly appropriate it is that Senator Kerry "feels like 1972 again", particularly since his spirit has never left those glory days of America bashing.

"I WAS A FOOTBALL STAR IN HIGH SCHOOL! ONCE I SCORED THREE TOUCHDOWNS IN ONE GAME!"
-- Al Bundy, Married with Children

"I WAS A WAR HERO IN VIETNAM! ONCE I SCORED THREE PURPLE HEARTS IN ONE TOUR!"
-- John F Kerry (did you know he Served In Vietnam?)

Need I say more?
Ken | Email | Homepage | 03.06.06 - 12:35 pm | #

Kerry is an ass..

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