Look It up in the Bookmobile
Over at Red State, Head Chimp Extraordinary Moe Lane attempts snark, sneering at stupid liberals who don't get William Bulter Yeats references.
I recognize that the public school educational process......has resulted in many of our lurkers not being fully tutored in Western Literature.
Therefore, as a public service for those members of the Online Left scratching their heads about why Norm Scheiber entitled his discussion on the upcoming Democratic catastrophe "Slouching towards Denver," I hereby reproduce the poem ("What Rough Beast") in full. Here's a dictionary for the difficult words, too.
Oh dear.
Member of the Online Left I may be, but at least I do know that the title of Yeats's poem is "The Second Coming." For the record, I also know better than to link to incompetent undergraduate "commentary" on it. Finally, I am able to correctly link to an online dictionary.
There's nothing wrong with not knowing a lot or even anything about Yeats, just as there's lots of good stuff to say about knowing plenty about Yeats. But, you know, Moe Lane wants to call you a doodyhead for being unfamiliar with Yeats, while he is plainly stone ignorant of Yeats's work. This is par for the Red State Course; they don't know enough to know what they don't know, but they're damn sure they know more than those freaks from the nutroots! Wank wank wank.
The comments are fun too, especially the guy speculating that maybe Robert Bork got his book title from Yeats also.
It's my guess that the "literary reference" is to Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah, not Yeats.
Posted by: Davis | March 24, 2008 at 04:56 PM
The guy probably thinks "graduating from Yale" means the guy was paroled, too...
Posted by: actor212 | March 24, 2008 at 05:33 PM
Fortunately for Lane, the posting was text and not audio, so we didn't get a chance to hear him go on at length about that poet "Yeets".
Posted by: zadig | March 24, 2008 at 05:43 PM
Hey, you dont spose that Didion gal got the title for her essay and book from that thar poem too, does ya? Gosh, itz good ta hav 1 a tha 3 stooges ta hep us out wid dis triky litratur stuf.
Posted by: Bob | March 24, 2008 at 06:22 PM
Couldn't it also be theorized that Scheiber took it from Didion who, of course, took it from Yeats?
Posted by: dadanarchist | March 24, 2008 at 06:23 PM
Nobody who went to high school for more than a week doesn't know that poem. It's like bringing up "The A Train" as an example of an obscure jazz composition.
Can you guys stop talking about those guys? I like reading you guys but it keeps interfering with my desire to pretend those guys don't exist.
What would you write about then, you ask? I dunno, that's you guys' problem.
Posted by: borehole | March 24, 2008 at 08:39 PM
You know, I completely missed the dictionary thing. Lemme steal the link, and much obliged!
Posted by: Moe Lane | March 24, 2008 at 09:45 PM
Oh, before I forget: there's nothing actually important about the commentary; it just had the poem. I hope that you didn't waste time actually reading it...
Posted by: Moe Lane | March 24, 2008 at 09:49 PM
Oh, be nice. He may have made some elementary mistakes, but consider this: Who else has ever had the idea of quoting "The Second Coming" online in the context of a current political squabble?
In this, at least, he's a visionary.
Posted by: Phila | March 24, 2008 at 10:26 PM
The proper Yeats poem for those Red State boys is "Among School Children"
Posted by: dSmith | March 24, 2008 at 10:51 PM
Who else has ever had the idea of quoting "The Second Coming" online in the context of a current political squabble?
I was nice by not pointing that out....
Posted by: Thers | March 24, 2008 at 11:19 PM
This is as good as when Jeff Godlstein didn't know who painted the Mona Lisa. At the screeching height of the Da Vinci Code hype.
Drugs are bad, kids.
Don't do drugs.
Posted by: TRex | March 24, 2008 at 11:38 PM
I, for one, DESPISE reading verse. I never did warm up to it, regardless of the subject. Songs are different somehow, but poems put me right to sleep. So, who is this "Yeats" you speak of? Am I illiterate yet?
Posted by: bob | March 24, 2008 at 11:41 PM
Oh noes!!
teh stupid, it burnz us
Posted by: fourlegsgood | March 25, 2008 at 12:36 AM
Well, but the interesting thing about Mr. Lane's post, and about the Scheiber article it discusses, is that the "Democrats in disarray" theme of the article realy doesn't have much to do with the Yeats poem, at least on the surface of things.
Are Scheiber and Lane racists enough to call Barak Obama a "rough beast"? And if not, what the heck is their point?
Perhaps the point is simply to impress all us lefty hoi polloi with their knowledge of high culture, but in that case, it would ahve been more accurate to entitle the article, "Sailing to Denver," or some such thing . . .
"An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium."
Plainly about John McCain and today's Republican Party, right?
Posted by: rea | March 25, 2008 at 07:05 AM
A more apt bit of verse to describe the acumulated effect of wingnut wisdon is Shelly's Ozymandias:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
But what do I know, I'm just an illiterate lefty blogger/ traitorous librarian.
Posted by: Keith | March 25, 2008 at 09:46 AM
What? You mean he's not quoting from "Babylon 5"? That would have been my guess.
Posted by: dr. luba | March 25, 2008 at 12:22 PM
No one was scratching their heads trying to understand the reference. We get it, really we do. We're all just so fucking sick of every two-bit hack wanting to suggest obsolesence trying to riff on Yeats. Yeah, there was "Slouching towards Gommorah", then Dan Savage wrote "Skipping towards Gommorah", and we've heard it used by waay too many lame college newspaper op-ed writers.
It's like when someone riffing on Austin Powers jokes, then tediuosly explaining to you that they're quoting a comedy movie spoofing the James Bond genre of the 60's. It's not that we don't understand, we just don't care.
Posted by: RodeoBob | March 25, 2008 at 12:23 PM
Yeah, it feels like piling on, but is it too late to point out that it's Noam, not Norm, Scheiber?
Posted by: Spokane Moderate | March 25, 2008 at 08:09 PM
stupid liberals who don't get William Bulter Yeats references
Bulter. Heh heh. Stupid liberals.
Posted by: The Kenosha Kid | March 25, 2008 at 11:27 PM
These Red State Red Staters understand Yeats' deep involvement in esoteric practices, including Teh Tantric Hotsex, right? That he was the late 19th Century equivalent of a DFH? They do get that?
Oh; they don't. They don't understand the context for Yeats as a person or a poet.
Okay. Well, nevermind then.
Posted by: Jemand von Niemand | March 27, 2008 at 12:49 PM
The Second Coming is the only poem that a politician is allowed to quote without getting called a mincing egghead pansy, probably because of its title. A few years ago Hillary mentioned E.B. White and Gov. Pataki sneered on and on, until his daughter chewed him out and said the guy wrote that cute movie about the mouse.
People don't like poets. Who needs someone who sees the world in ways that are strange and incomprehensible to most people, and who communicates in incomprehensible gibberish?
Posted by: Archer | April 01, 2008 at 06:52 AM
Yeah, yeah, White isn't a poet. I was just saying.
Posted by: Archer | April 01, 2008 at 06:54 AM