Friday, April 16, 2010

What Do Tea Baggers Want?

I'm with Richard Hofstadter
What the Tea Baggers are all about
Is the paranoid style of American politics

These are the same people who buy a gun
You know, in case they might need to shoot
A minority group member

"Tea Baggers" appeared as a comment in the Room For Debate
weblog of NYTIMES.COM's post, "What Do Tea Party Backers Want?" on April 15, 2010

Monday, April 12, 2010

Sexual Tensions In The Woods

for Olivia, an evolutionary biologist

Large male oaks are spewing pollen
Saying Frankly, Scarlet Tanager,
I don't give a flying f-stop!

My eyes are big and rheumy
With the sex tensions in the air

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Alan Sees A Ghost

Greenspan consults the ghost of Ayn Rand.
She goes galumphing through the flat
On stiletto heels, in furs and winding sheets.
(His wife would like the place exorcised.)

The Ghost of Halloween Past!
It is smoking furiously.
The long cigarette holder,
The scary angry scowls,
The haunting dark eyes,
The Sunset Boulevard stares,
The spooky Russian accent,
The smell of sulphur
-- You know she went to hell!--
Yes, it is Ayn Rand.

She says in her sepulchral voice,
Alan, you know you did the right thing!
You allowed the finance markets
To become thoroughly deregulated;
You helped bring about capitalist ideals
And the markets regulated themselves.

Thus, in a seance, all the lights out,
Is the work of economics done.

"You can take the boy out of the cult,
But you can't take the cult out of the boy.
"




Notes: Alan Greenspan was one of Ayn Rand's co-authors
for her collection of ideological essays, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal."
The famous concluding quote here, in italics, is from the economist Paul
Samuelson.


"Alan Sees A Ghost" appeared in the NYTIMES.COM Deal Book weblog
on April 7, 2010, as a comment on their post, "Greenspan Hearing Goes Dark."

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