sarcasm on

Damn, that's good poetry. I think it compares favorably with Yeats.

sarcasm off

What was that Yeats said? Oh yeah:

...while the worst are full of passionate intensity...

Rough beast, indeed.

OT but fyi - the blame-Amerika-first crowd has started a Campus-Watch-Watch website [Link: www.campus-watch-watch.com...]

Derbyshire's column was quite a hoot!

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!!

Here's a thought.

Bush is wrong on cloning. I want two of this Derbyshire fellow.

Nothing like remembering sitting in class and getting torn to shreds by a very smart professor who wanted to make you better
Bet Baraka is not listening

BTW Its stuff like this that should shame the left and the fact that they don't is pretty damming

I think it be very good.

That was a very funny piece. What bothers me the most about this whole thing is not that Baraka is a talentless buffoon spouting stupid things, but rather that he was appointed to a public position by supposedly responsible officials. Didn't anyone do any due diligence before they appointed him? Of course, maybe they did do some research and appointed him anyway, which is even worse.

#6 Montgomery:

Who be you to think?
Only explosion of owl
Be who we listen too
Whooooooooooooooo??????????????

What a load of crapola. Bravo Derbyshire!

who knows what idiocy lurks in the minds of guilty white liberals?
who knows why they gave bellesiles an endowment in spite of serious allegations of academic fraud?
who knows why its only okay for minority groups to be overtly racist?

the shadow do.

i'm not the shadow, though. i just think its crazy.

(#2) I noticed that campuswatch-watch-watch.com is available... :)

Who watches the watchers' watchers' watchers?

(#2) I noticed that campuswatch-watch-watch.com is available... :)

Who watches the watchers' watchers' watchers?

That is freaking hillarious..

Back to JD's column, it is rich in humor.. Love it.

About the poet, what bothers me honestly is not that he's allowed to stay in his position. Fine, let him. But there's nothing in the rules saying that the people who appointed him cannot condemn the poet DAILY in writing as official statements.

Has the Gov. of NJ done this? How about the individual who hired him? Has anyone taken anything other than a "we cannot fire him" stance? Why does "we cannot fire him" equate to "we cannot condemn or criticize him"?

Check out the Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein's presence on campus-watch-watch's page of "Professors of Justice".

[Link: www.eden.rutgers.edu...]

Oh, and you can say hello to campus-watch-watch's web-mistress Charlotte Kates:

ckates@pegasus.rutgers.edu

You know I think setting up a campus-watch-watch-watch is a great idea but it would have to be a complete parody site..

It could be just a list of all the fools on campus-watch-watch.. oh but wait, that would be McCarthyism, you know, listing public facts about people..

Never mind..

#8,

I second your bravo to Derbyshire! His piece was great.

Those politicians who appointed him should be embarrassed by that "poem".

#2 Nikita,

I checked out that stupid Campus-Watch Watch website and wrote a nice little email to them.

Ugh, these academia loony lefties really make my blood boil!

"Charlotte Kates claims to have been a Communist since junior high school."

[Link: 216.239.39.100...]

From the Declaration of Charlotte Kates

15. She received the intensive. After spending approximately one hundred thousand dollars on Scientology's cures, she had "learned" in her auditing sessions that billions of years ago, in a past life, she had been forced to "zap" her mother with a ray gun by an evil space government, yet she was still afflicted with Lyme disease. She had maxed out all of her credit cards, taken out loans, and otherwise expended all of her resources-- and given all of her money to Scientology in return for a much-promised, never-materialized cure for her Lyme disease. She was repeatedly discouraged from visiting a doctor, and sent back again and again, to Flag, for more NED Assists, more auditing, one more intensive, one more process, eventually leaving one Scientologist with untreated Lyme disease, and the CoS thousands of dollars richer. She still owes one Scientologist in Clearwater $8000. Scientology still promises her a cure, still attempts to lead her on the medical runaround.

[Link: www.holysmoke.org...]

****

Oy, the internet. I couldn't make this stuff up. LOL

While Baraka was on a roll with his 'who' questions, wonder why he didn't include this one:
Who freed the slaves?

Who who who...
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man?
I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby
Fall in love with me (yeah!!)

LOL! I just noticed the page title here is "Like an Owl Exploding"!

Hilarious, Charles. {8^D

That was a laugh-out-loud column. Very, very funny. I especially liked the way Derbyshire opened the piece, with his suggestion that we should have a towering poet as the state poet laureate. Ha ha ha ha.

#16- A lyme deseased scientologist communist? Sounds about as appealing as an explosion of owl.....

#18 John B

Love it, thanks.

U B who, that who B U.

I propose a Baraka poetry "fendschrift," poems written in honor of the Bard of Bergen County.

I never saw a purple Baraka
upon a midnight dreary
but I know if I did
he would wear his Mao jacket
rolled
and walk upon the rusted tuna cans
along the Jersey shore
until Jesse and Al
awaken him to go watch
a movie about a barbershop. Then
Quothe the owl:
"Barakaka!
Barakaka!"

Owls exploding?

My log says that Baraka must have made the mistake of watching Twin Peaks whilst smoking crack. Remember, "the owls are not what they seem."

Most of the world seems to be hip to Baraka's essential "loon-i-tude" (since we're getting poetic, here), but one news organization wrote up a piece praising 'Who Blew Up America". Only in San Francisco ...

[Link: www.sfbayview.com...]

However, the poem - in its entirety - seems to suggest something different altogether. For example, throughout the poem, Baraka appears to contradict the American ideal by exposing several episodes, such as slavery, Jim Crow, assassinations, manifest destiny, racism, global oppression and genocide, through cynical yet engaging poetic verses. Baraka highlights these events by asking questions throughout the poem that begin with the word “who.”

Wow! Now that's what I call astute criticism - NOT!

BTW, you rock Log Lady! To reach back to the infamous "Twin Peaks", lol lol lol

By golly, why wasn't Abdul Abulbul Amiri in Oslo with Jimmuh? By the Nobel Prize committee's standards, that should be a Nobel Literature prize winner, right? *snicker*

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, Amiri Baraka is a talentless hack. Well, he obviously had enough talent to snow the "wise men" of New Jersey, but that's not literary talent. Ten grand for that steaming pile of turds! The emperor has no clothes, folks.

And after Derbyshire fisked him, "LeRoi looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone..."

Who 'Sploded the Owl?

Who be da U.S stupidfada?
Who be Kates and Baraka!
Geb-phart an Micheal Moore
They just be ol' lef' wing ho's!
Daschle, Streisand, Reiner
They can all kiss my heiner!
What 'bout them Bagdad Boys?
They bent over and was Sadam's toys.
Who I say who
Who be Not In Our Name?
Idiotarians be the same!
Who blew up dat pink rubber ring
With the horsey head, the floaty thing?
Who blew up da Owl?
Who set fire to the paper towel?
Jimmuh Kartur gots the prize
What don't mean doodly
In mos' folks eyes.
Bonehead Ed Asner I sure feel
Can't get a job as a human shield.
I want my money!

Th' End

#26 Clutch, you earned the money my man. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.

"Who blew up dat pink rubber ring
With the horsey head, the floaty thing?"

LOL thanks!

Well I have written a MiSTing to "honour" Baraka, someone sent me a letter with the URL to his complete poem so I just had to do it. Anyway it's here:

[Link: home.online.no...]

(26)Clutch:

Here's what the SF Chronicle had to say about your wonderful poem:

However, the poem - in its entirety - seems to suggest something different altogether. For example, throughout the poem, Clutch appears to contradict the idiotarian ideal by exposing several episodes, such as a profound meditation on environmentalism ("Who blew up da Owl? Who set fire to the paper towel?"), coupled with a subtle hint of homoerotism ("They bent over and was Sadam's toys"), and a scathing indictment of America's celebrity-obsessed culture ("Daschle, Streisand, Reiner
They can all kiss my heiner!") through cynical yet engaging poetic verses. Clutch highlights these events by asking questions throughout the poem that begin with the word “who.”

Clearly, Clutch is one of our finest contemporary poets.

BTW, Partizaner, in commending Clutch for his fine verse, I certainly did not mean to slight your noble work. (I know how touchy you artistic types can be:-))"And walk upon the rusted tuna cans along the Jersey shore" is clearly up there with "April is the cruellest month."

#26 Clutch:

I laughed so hard I peed myself. Thank you.

Did you know that Amiri Baraka is Swahili for Bigoted Ignoramus?

#14 Ben,

Definately a parody site. Maybe the first major article could be how it was really "'Splodin' Owls that brought dem towers down."

With A Little Brain
(to the tune of Wings' "With A Little Luck")

With a little brain, we can stop the war
We can tell Saddam Hussein what for
With a little luck, we can calm things down
Can't you see the region exploding?
   
There is no end to our appeasement effort
There is no end, there is no sense
The UN resolutions just make him madder
Although he's a tyrant, we can't fight him, why can't you see?
   
With a little time, we can clear it up
We can just bring in Koffi Annan
With a little luck, we can all back down
Then there'll be no misunderstandings
   
There'll be no end in sight to this Iraquagmire
To blood for oil, there is no end
The people of Iraq are starving from the sanctions
We did it to them, so let's do it to them, just me and you
   
With a little luck, we can put it off
There'll be no nukes rocketing skywards
With a little brain, we can feel their pain
What was that? The owl exploding?
   
With a little brain
With a little luck
With a little brain, a little brain, a little luck

What was that? Tel Aviv exploding?
Or was it Washington exploding?
Whoaaaaaa. Uh-Oh.

With a little brain
With a little brain
A little brain, a little brain, a little brain

The "Bilbo" referred to in Baraka's dreary screed is not Bilbo Baggins but Senator Theodore G. Bilbo from Mississippi. Bilbo was a virulent racist who disgraced the Senate during the 30s and 40s just as Baraka is disgracing himself now with anti-Semitic crapola. Hatred makes strange bedfellows.

I know who Senator Bilbo was, but that isn't nearly as funny as shouting "The Hobbit!" and so I will.

Also if 90% of the people that read this ask what is evil about the Hobbit, it shows that he's not communicating his ideas very well.

#35

Baraka is not communicating his ideas well because his ideas defy rational analysis.
You may be right; LeRoi is so goofy he could be referring to Bilbo Baggins.

Thank you all for the kind words. I'm glad that y'all enjoyed it and that I made a few people laugh. (Sorry 'bout the pants, Montgomery!)

I knocked off that little parody in about 5 minutes. I did it primarily to show that Baraka has absolutely no talent whatsoever, but that he operates on about an 11-year old level (I'm 46, FWIW) and makes about as much sense as a ranting 3-year old whose Mommy didn't buy him a new toy. Plus I like pokin' holes in the whacky left with a crowd that appreciates it (all my in-laws are Floriduh Dummocrats...)

I promise you, there will be more in the future, espcially after I get the job as po'et larryat o' Jawjuh...