Amiri Baraka meet Pat Buchanan

The Conning Tower ^ | 3/17/03 | Trentino

[Davis]

Amiri Baraka meet Pat Buchanan

We've dealt with Amiri Baraka, the former poet laureate of the entire State of New Jersey in this space before. Indeed, my answering lyric to Mr. Baraka has enjoyed success among the cognoscenti rivaling that accorded to Sir Walter Raleigh's answer to Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd. Hence I do not hesitate to perform the honor of introducing Baraka to Buchanan, that is, the author of Somebody Bombed America to the author of Whose War?. The target in both cases is the same.

Mr. Buchanan subtitles his essay A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America''s interest. Mr. Buchanan is a coward. He declines a bout with muscular Protestants like the President, Mr. Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield, Instead, he pounds his chest and bellows at the circumcised minions of Murdoch ha-moloch, William Kristol, David Brooks, et al. You can read all about those devilish, devious neocons (a "neocon" per Kristol, pere, is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality) in Mr. Buchanan's updated and condensed edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Jonathan Schell, Useless Idiot

Not so many days after the publication of Mona Charen's excellent book, Useful Idiots and its celebration in these Conning Towers, the scribbler, Jonathan Schell, whom time and Mrs. Charen dealt with quite severely, has found another publisher for his foolishness.

Two years into President Reagan's first term of office, Mr. Schell published to general liberal acclaim, a preposterous argument for disarmament, The Fate of the Earth. Mrs. Charen records: "The CBS Evening News gave the book favorable mention as did Helen Caldicott ("the new Bible of our time"). Bill Moyers mused about what would happen if Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev read the book to one another at the next summit meeting, while Walter Mondale declared the book to be "historic."

Even so, there were Lib dissenters, among them Michael Kinsley, then the editor of Harpers who "declined to join in the general adulation. He called The Fate of the Earth 'one of the most pretentious things I've ever read.' Schell's writing amounted to little more than 'bullying,' Kinsley wrote, and featured 'hothouse reasoning: huge and exotic blossoms of ratiocination that could grow only in an environment protected from the slightest chill of common sense.'"

Flash forward to March 2003, turn to Harper's magazine, now under different management, and you will find Mr. Schell, steadfast as a box of rocks, ardent, unaffected by failure, discoursing on The Futility of War.

Global Warming

It is a truth universally acknowledged that New York City doormen are formidable weather mavens. Steve Smith, one of the best of them, confided to me the other day that he reposes little confidence in the prediction of global warming bruited about by the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol. "They're predicting warming, two-point something degrees Fahrenheitt fifty years from now. That's easy. But they hedge, don't they, and talk about eighty percent chance of rain next Thursday."

[Ancesthntr]

Now, now, now...we should be kind to Pat-after all, he lost an uncle in Buchenwald. The guy fell out of a guard tower.

[Davis]

I dunno why, but that 'splains a lot...

[Davis]

Links to Baraka's poem and Buchanan's piece are contained within this text at the website if anyone would like to read them.

[Goodman26]

I don't want to let facts get in the way of your smear -- which is based on the allegation that Buchanan uses "NeoCon" as a codeword for Jewish people. But, one of the lead NeoCons that Buchanan identifies and trashes is Bill Bennett who happens to be a "muscular" (whatever you mean by that) Catholic of very similar background to Buchanan himself.

[hrhdave]

Yes, Bill Bennett is one of Buchanan's targets, but check out all the rest of them. A little cover don't hurt, you know. You can see through it if you look; you don't have to look very hard. Whose war? Jews' war, is good old Pat's answer.

That Poem answering Baraka is at

http://www.atrentino.com/Pome.html

[Stultis]

bump

[gcruse]

Baraka and Buchanan. A marriage made in Jew-hating heaven.

[Davis]

Heaven?

[hrhdave]

The Colonel's lady and Mrs. O'Grady are sisters under the skin. ..........Kipling