I’ve been thinking lately about the advantage Bush’s ease with folksy speak gives him in this race. Even watching Brooks and Shields on PBS, it’s clearly easier to like the more relaxed Brooks (despite his opinions) than the more uptight Shields. We like likable people. Folksy demeanors help them look more relaxed and hence more likable.
That’s why I was shocked, enthralled, and virtually cheering from my desk to encounter this blisteringly folksy diatribe against Bush from Garrison Keillor. He justifies offering his rollicking rant this way:
We have a sacred duty to bequeath [this country] to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger. Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader.
“Hot” doesn’t begin to describe his prose…here’s a small sample for you to chew on (you might want to grab a glass of water):
Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.
merci Ondine
Thanks for that link, Edward, that’s a good one. In a recent tipsy late night camping political discussion with a friend who is a Republican, this is where we ended. He said that I should not look on the present administration as representative of the Republican Party, and I agreed, adding that I had great respect for the Eisenhower presidency, and even a gruding admiration for some of what Nixon was able to accomplish.
Good things to remember, and to publically note.
a glass of water? I’d say a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade at least for the steel magnolia set.
“Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader.”
Err, as a matter of fact, Dante put those who were neutral were in the Vestibule of Hell, outside the “Abandon Hope” gate, in place of cold clammy mud and mist, where insects stung them incessantly.
The hottest place in Hell would be, oh, I don’t know: maybe for the Simoniacs (heads down in an oven) or the Warmongers (boiling blood), or the Flatterers (boiling feces). Murderers were in a hot desert with raining fire (but it’s a dry heat, so probably not them.). And the deepest place in hell was a plain of ice (for the betrayers).
Just to note that Dante (who was exiled from Florence after backing the wrong political faction of the Guelphs) didn’t hesitate to put *his* political enemies (and some allies) in the relevant parts of Hell. Bitter? You betcha.
“I agreed, adding that I had great respect for the Eisenhower presidency,”
Why? Economic growth (despite the image of the ’50s) was really very lacklustre during Eisenhower, especially in his first term.
Thanks for the Dante clarification Tom…further proof that folksy doesn’t necessarily mean right.
More and more, it is becoming obvious that Bush and the Republicans have nothing positive to run on. The last possible positive crumbled at the convention, when the protesters got in. They’re gonna “keep us safe” when they can’t even put door guards on their own convention? We’re all just lucky that the protesters didn’t have anything more dangerous than anti- Bush T shirts.
As to the current crowd not being “real Republicans”, I agree, and wish the “real Republicans” the best of luck in taking back their party. Perhaps sometime in the future, we can get back to Republicans who beleve in the worth of hard work, fiscal prudence in government, “engagement not involvment” abroad, and “traditional family values” by example and not legislation.
Till then, well, the party is being run by scumbuckets.
The “Vestibule of Hell”.
Wow. Who’s in the “Mudroom of Hell”? You know, other than slobbering retrievers.
Attaboy, Tom. Nothing like a classical education. Here’s the Longfellow translation of the relevant verse in Canto III:
Dante also put some of his friends there, too, accusing them of (among other things) sodomy. Whatta guy.
“Here’s the Longfellow translation of the relevant verse in Canto III.”
I gotta say, I don’t like the Longfellow translation (though it’s not the worst). Prefer Ciardi’s or Pinsky’s.
If you want a not-so-serious take on Dante, there’s a Niven/Pournelle modern-day adaptation of it, called, unsurprisingly, “Inferno”.
“Dante also put some of his friends there, too, accusing them of (among other things) sodomy. ”
Thought that was in Purgatory where he meets one of his friends working off his sins of umm, Sanctorum-generation.
“Whatta guy.”
Hey, how’d you feel if you met your ideal of womanhood at 9 years old, when you’ve already been promised to marry some other girl, then the perfect woman gets married off to some other schmuck and died at 24? And the best you’ve got to hope for is her to guide you through a vision of heaven? (Where of course the spirits don’t bonk.)
You’d be a bit salty too.
Mind you, he is (in the poem) moved to tears on occasions by the suffering he sees.
Gotta say, the most grisly & horrifying thing I have read is Dante’s description of Count Ugolino gnawing the skull of Archbishop Ruggieri in the frozen lake of the Ninth circle. Brrr.
(http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/utopia/circle9.html)
Tom — another Dante person! I particularly like Canto III since, if memory serves, it’s the one in which we find my favorite candidate for silliest Pope ever, Celestine V (who “made the great refusal” by resigning the papacy, and was then imprisoned for the rest of his life by his successor, Boniface VIII, who had reportedly helped to convince him to resign by placing a hidden speaking tube in the artificial cave Celestine had constructed inside the Vatican, and urging him to resign through it while pretending to be the Holy Ghost.)
“Tom — another Dante person!”
My favorite piece of literature, if it doesn’t show. I particularly the discussions on physics in the Cantos – you get an idea of how a Medieval man, albeit a highly educated one, understood the world: how they thought sight worked, what the nature of the planets were, etc. If anything, it gives the lie to the idea that “before Columbus, they thought the world was flat”.
Interestingly, I have a book about vision of heaven and hell before Dante. What’s interesting is that there was a lively genre of journeys through Hell, which was killed stone dead by Dante’s masterpiece. No one wanted to write another going-to-hell vision after Dante had written the best of the genre.
Now, however, we’d have “Inferno II – Hell freezes over” with Vin Diesel as Dante, with Jackie Chan as the Roman poet Martial (instead of Virgil) using “martial arts” (geddit) to rescue Beatrice (Kiera Knightley) from Lucifer (played by Ralph Fiennes, who needed the money).
“I particularly like Canto III since, if memory serves, it’s the one in which we find my favorite candidate for silliest Pope ever, Celestine V”
Any bets Cheney gets a speaking tube installed into the Oval Office?
Gotta say, the most grisly & horrifying thing I have read is Dante’s description of Count Ugolino gnawing the skull of Archbishop Ruggieri in the frozen lake of the Ninth circle. Brrr.
Ain’t no question: the best part of the Inferno, bar none. I’d assume the same is true of the Divine Comedy but, sadly, I’ve never read Purgatorio or Paradiso.
Anarch: the Paradiso is, in my opinion, skippable if you don’t really love Dante, but you should read the Purgatorio — it’s great.
Everybodys always pickin on Ugolino! He tells a sad an heartbreakin story about how his kids begged an begged for him to eat them until he just had no choice. An if you were frozen behind somebody with brains as tasty an delicious as Ruggieri’s wouldnt you want a nosh too?
Other stuff Keillor said against Bush type world:
I’m horrified (applause)…I’m horrified at the thought that torture of prisoners is American policy. It just terrribly horrifies me. Say I’m wrong, I’d like to be wrong…but I would hate to see enlisted men and women being made scapegoats in order to protect policy makers.
Hi Fafnir!
Tom: actually, now that I think of it, the parallels are rather striking. Celestine was a hermit who had lived for somethingg like sixty years in a very 4’x4′ cave in the Abruzzi Mountains (think of Bush’s alcoholism as his Abruzzi cave years), before having a vision which led the College of Cardinals, which had been bitterly divided about who to name Pope, to choose him. Admittedly, unlike our current President, God did not tell Celestine that he was supposed to be Pope — in fact, he is said to have run away when told that he had been elected Pope, and had to be brought to the Vatican by force, so here the parallel breaks down. But then it picks up again: having spent all that time in the cave, he proceeded to reduce the Curia to chaos, since he had no idea how to run it and could not settle disputes among his feuding cardinals. He was also, shall we say, not a detail man, and kept giving some benefices away several times over and others not at all. I can’t quite think of what in Bush’s life corresponds to the artificial cave Celestine built to live in (you really have to feel for the guy) — if Bush had tried to build a miniature Crawford inside the White House, the parallel would admittedly be better. But anyways, finally, Boniface rigged up the speaking tube and pretended to be the Holy Ghost, and the rest is history. Except that the Vatican, either impressed by his holy life or unwilling to admit a mistake (depends on who you believe) then canonized him. (The present election.)
this is a great thread, but man are we the opposite of folksy…
Fafnir wrote:
“Everybodys always pickin on Ugolino! He tells a sad an heartbreakin story about how his kids begged an begged for him to eat them until he just had no choice. An if you were frozen behind somebody with brains as tasty an delicious as Ruggieri’s wouldnt you want a nosh too?”
We
are
not
worthy
Hail Fafnir!