The American Thinker Loses His Marbles
Is this satire? As God is my witness, I can’t tell anymore.
UNDERGROUND
Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
One friendly critic described the poem as a “vivid if obscurely symbolic description of a tribe of submarine primates.” I countered, “Although arguably the best poem ever written about submarine primates, most of Obama’s literary acolytes have largely — and charitably — chosen not to notice it.”
O’Hagan, however, chose to notice. He points out that both of the poem’s most conspicuous symbols, apes and figs, are mentioned in the Qur’an. Middle Eastern scholar Bernard Lewis has argued that although Muslims were relatively tolerant of Jews, there are at least three passages in the Qur’an in which Jews are denounced as “apes.” In sura 5.60, for instance, the Quran reads, “[Worse is he] whom Allah has cursed and brought His wrath upon, and of whom He made apes and swine.” “Swine” is apparently the epithet of choice for Christians, but “Underground” is not about swine. It is about apes — belligerent, boastful apes at that.
Read more: americanthinker.com