My Favorite Authors: Jonathan Swift and an updated Modest proposal

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday February 18, 2013 · 9:56 PM PST

2013/02/18 · 21:56

We are all fans of reasoned discourse here. This is a political site devoted to serious topics, like the deficit, and wealth inequality, and access to affordable health care, and the need to move past the racism and sexism that has been with this country for so long, and a number of other issues. Clarity and data driven analysis are great; in marked contrast to Redstate.com, we think over here. But there is room for satire as well, and sometimes it is just that which gets to the core of things. . .as people like Stewart and Colbert and Maher demonstrate on a consistent basis. Satire, as someone has said, is truth grinning at the rest of the world.

So today, I thought I would look at the 17th century English version of Mr Stewart, an irish Anglican Priest, of all people named Jonathan Swift. Particularly as some of his writings have some real relevance to the issues of the day; people and politics and prejudices being what they are.

Why don't we entertain a modest proposal?

MichiganChet

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 25, 2013 · 10:10 AM PST

2013/01/25 · 10:10

As I have written before, I subscribe to The Economist but have mixed feelings about it. The magazine (or the 'newspaper' as it prefers to style itself) has a lot of good info and a droll and erudite style that is generally fun to read, but has gone a bit off the rails recently, particularly in regards to covering Politics in America. For a long time, its writers seem to have had a man-crush on Mitt Romney, endorsed Obama only reluctantly last year, and in their most recent editorial on the President, seemed gripped by the delusion that the deficit was the most pressing problem the country faced (nothing about long term unemployment, stagnant wages, economic inequality, the hollowing out of the middle class etc etc)

So It is with mixed feelings that I highlight last night's entry in "Democracy in America" about a racist Georgia cracker sheriff and his lizrd-brained reaction to the executive orders that might actually make America a little safer. Well, it is good ammunition for progressives anyway.

Besides, for all you Georgians, who may be reading this, it is why strenuous efforts are worthwhile to turn the state blue, or at least purple. C'mon Bulldawgs, I know you can do it.

Over the fold for the post, y'all

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 15, 2013 · 2:00 PM PST

2013/01/15 · 14:00

Although this seems to be beating a dead issue, I am in an elegaic mood for personal reasons. And so, for my promised contribution, I offer this in memory of a soul-less slippery bloodsucking eel of a political 'person', who is now politically deader than Marley's ghost. I miss not being able to vote against him anymore.

Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 03, 2012 · 8:23 PM PST

2012/12/03 · 20:23

I admit that I am not normally a religious person, but for this diary, lets have a go at one of the Gods that is worshipped fervently in this country.

I'm not discussing the God, whoever or whatever she is. True, I am an atheist of the kind of militant variety - and this is not a popular thing to be in this country which strongly approves of God. I'd have a better chance at high political office if I was a Muslim. But that is a discussion that is not hard to find, and I am not profiling Christopher Hitchens here.

I will also refrain from blasphemy at the second totemic deity in this great nation: the worship of guns. It is true that I despise this form of worship as well, perhaps more than the first. It is also true that this country does not take kindly to those who insult this from of worship; witness that heretic Bob Costas daring to suggest that maybe an innocent 22 year old woman's death might have been preventable. Heaven forfend; he couldn't have been more roundly condemned if he had suggested that Jesus Christ was a closet homosexual, or that Kate Smith used to fuck aardvarks before warbling 'God Bless America'. But I see some Kossacks have diaried that as well.

No, I am going to take aim at that third, and maybe the highest God in the American pantheon: The worship of the almighty buck. The dollar, that is, the $. Alas, I am not so atheistic on this one . . .but undisguised, Mitt Romney-style greed is still repulsive to me, and I think many. So let's see what the Dartmouth truth teller had to say about that one. Written of course so that even a child could understand.

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 19, 2012 · 11:43 PM PST

2012/11/19 · 23:43

I Can't Remember Anything
Can't Tell If this Is True or Dream
Deep down Inside I Feel to Scream
this Terrible Silence Stops Me

Now That the War Is Through with Me
I'm Waking up I Can Not See
That There's Not Much Left of Me
Nothing Is Real but Pain Now

Metallica 'One', from 'And Justice for All'

"To make a long story short, we were not pleasant people and the war was not a pleasant business. I have no doubt we radicalized more southern Vietnamese to Ho Chi Minh's national revolution than we 'saved.'" So writes Larry Heinemann, author of two absolutely blood curdling novels about Vietnam, the first, called Close Quarters something of a memoir, the second, Paco's Story something of a nightmare. It is these nightmares i would share with you, being as we are so recently past Veterans day, you know.

I too have tasted a little bit of war, in Colombia, not generally well known, and in Iraq which is. Just a taste, enough to make it, for me something a little more than stories on a page

But these works do not just give you a taste of what war does to people; they grab you, pin you to a chair, force your mouth open and poor the bloody horror down your throat, making you choke. So lets imbibe.

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 30, 2012 · 5:00 PM PDT

2012/10/30 · 17:00

Tonight, in this city without altar
I hope the dead souls can see my eyes
and turn my watchful gaze into the flicker of a candle flame
Not the sacrificial spirit money for the ancestors
not the raging blaze that illuminates the cold night
but memory's nakedness
is like a bone that will not decay

Liu Xiaobo 15 Years of Darkness, translated by Jeffrey Yang

The past is a predator

Old Argentine proverb

From 1976 to 1983 the nation of Argentina was ruled by a junta of high ranking military officers who had seized power from the inept and corrupt government of Isabel Peron, widow of Juan Peron. Yes, the same one in 'Evita'. Many in Argentina applauded at the time, including a respected Jewish Newspaper editor named Jacob Timerman who wanted some order in a society increasingly riven by murderous deep political divisions; argentina was already facing down a violent left wing guerrilla threat from an organization that can legitimately be described as terrorist. The response from this new military government was to authorize a policy of kidnap, torture and murder of anyone who participated in, sympathized with or even was unlucky enough to know anyone suspected of left-leaning activities against the state. This included Mr Timerman.

He survived, but most of the people they took - without any legal justification at all, of course - were never seen again, and thus a new word entered the lexicon, first in Argentina and then the world: The Desaparecido, the disappeared one. The word has most emphatically not disappeared from the discussion of the depths that a police state, or military state, can sink to.

The war against left wing terrorism came to be known as La Guerra Sucia, the dirty war. It is estimated that by the time the war came to an end in 1983 with the replacement of the Junta by a civilian elected government, up to 30,000 people had been disappeared.

Not that anything like that could ever happen here . . .

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 16, 2012 · 5:17 PM PDT

2012/10/16 · 17:17

Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death."
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee

Algernon Charles Swinburne "A Ballad of Death"

In June 2010 Christhopher Hitchens, well known author, journalist, debater, lecturer and general bon vivant woke up in a New York Hotel room and understood what it was to die.

He was in the middle of a sucessful book tour - selling his own autobiography, matter of fact, and had appearances scheduled that evening. Although north of sixty he certainly wasn't slowing down, and was writing, and I suspect conversing and drinking just as avidly as ever. Nevertheless he could barely summon enough strength to call for help and summon the paramedics who would take him to the hospital where the ever polite emergency room doctors would escort him from 'Wellville' to the land where people get to learn about the real meaning of words like 'suspicious mass' , 'metastatic' and 'chemoradiation'

In short, he had to confront his own mortality now that he had permanently been deported to 'tumorville' (I prefer 'Cancerworld', but the diary is about him, not me). And being Hitchens, he wrote about it, in a series of essays that have now been republished in a thin book called, so appropriately 'Mortality'. The front cover is black; the back cover has a picture of him looking wan and haggard and pained; and of course everyone knows by now that this is a posthumous book, the very word 'posthumous' coming from the Latin meaning 'last'.

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday October 01, 2012 · 8:16 PM PDT

2012/10/01 · 20:16

Let's start this one in Iraq. Not because of the way the political leadership has dealt with the country, or because of the importance of the war as a central issue during most of the first decade of the twenty-first century. No instead, lets take it from the point of view of an officer serving in a fairly obscure part of the country, in a fairly obscure post, following the political events of his country back home. It is 2004, it is clear that John Kerry is going to be up against Bush the wretched and his minions, and there is the sense that maybe he can be beaten. And at least the election is going to be close.

And there is this rising star young politician that the officer hears of, and is intrigued. And the officer - for it is I - having been disappointed by Howard Dean - is impressed more and more by what he hears and reads. So much so, that when in conversation with a fellow officer who happened to be African-American, mentions this rising young very eloquent politician, is surprised that she hasn't yet heard of him. "Well" I say, "when you do hear more of him. . . .and you will. . .I think you're going to really like him. You might say he is what the U.S really needs right now, even with the war hero going up against the Texas laughing boy."

Needless to say, the politician who, from 6,530 miles away, I had identified as an up and comer was the Democratic candidate for the junior Senator from Illinois, a mixed race University of Chicago law professor with a name that should have disqualified him for any kind of national office, Barack Hussein Obama. I had a bit of a funny name too. I had been raised by a single mother. I got through a good school on wits and scholarship. What's not to like?

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday September 10, 2012 · 8:00 PM PDT

2012/09/10 · 20:00

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Given the events of the past week, I think it highly desireable and maybe inevitable that 'My favorite authors' take a turn for the political.

I have never tried to make this series timely or topical; I instead always wanted to say exactly what was I liked in a favorite author, and how my fellow Kossacks could profit from it. As well I just want to contribute to the general state of enlightenment on the web.There are certainly enough excellent diarists on the site who stay consistently on point and on topic; this is after all primarily a progressive political site.

But I do live in the real world, and I will say in the spirit of full disclosure that a have a highly partisan view of the upcoming election, as well as a highly charged personal view of both candidates for the office of President. And since the election will almost assuredly hinge on the state of the economy, it is high time that I explain another of my favorite authors, a Nobel-Prize winning economist who should be known to all close readers of the site, but who tells truths that bear retelling - that need retelling - over and over and over again, because it seems that no one listens the first ten or fifteen or one hundred times. But one of the virtues of the truth is that it is true; eventually it catches on and then it seems so self evident. It is not nearly the amount of work it takes to propagandize. Just ask the Republicans

And so, I present our resident truth-teller, the Cassandra of economics (a pretty dismal science in it's own right) Paul Krugman. The country is lucky to have him

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 27, 2012 · 8:15 PM PDT

2012/08/27 · 20:15

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

Algernon Charles Swinburne The Heptalogia (1880)

As another is a series that expands the notion of what a favored author is, I submit a poet.

Even those of us who really dig romantic poetry - and if we are men, are comfortable enough in our masculinity to state it - admit that it is an acquired taste. Not so much difficult to acquire as opera, Korean food, or professional soccer (to an american anyway). . .and I have a taste for all those things. . .but still, a taste that takes a little bit of maturity and experience or at least precocity to get. But when one does acquire the taste, it never leaves; start appreciating single malt, you will be drinking it until the day you die.

So with that in mind, let's have a taste of a poet that once acquired, I think will stay with you permanently. You've been warned.

So let's meet Mr. A. C. Swinburne. Hello, Algernon

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 13, 2012 · 8:12 PM PDT

2012/08/13 · 20:12

When the Jazzman's testifyin'
A faithless man believes
He can sing you into paradise
Or bring you to your knees
It's a gospel kind of feelin'
A touch of Georgia slide
A song of pure revival
And a style that's sanctified

Jazzman, take my blues away
Make my pain the same as yours
With every change you play

Carole King, Jazzman, 1974

Does anyone remember the Columbia Record and Tape Club? The organization where you got a record in any one of a previously chosen category unless you specified that you didn't want the selection? Although in some ways a scam, it still had a large selection of music and you could get it in different formats - they even offered reel-to-reel until 1982 - and the hook was you got 10 or 12 or whatever many selections for a penny at the price of a several year membership and a barrage of offers through the mail. In a way, it was the Amazon of its day. So I think that many people during the sixties and seventies pumped up their music collection through Columbia house and their '12 for a penny' offers.

This included my mother. And so, growing up with her and my sister in our modest little apartment, there were a number of eight track tapes (naturally) that we listened to. Billy Joel, Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Fifth Dimension, Helen Reddy, even Jethro Tull. And there was always one singer-songwriter who stood out for me, even as I would grit my teeth when my sister tormented me by repetitively playing Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits. But we did agree on this very musical woman. I even liked her during my teenage heavy metal years, although I sort of kept that to myself.

Now I listen to pretty much whatever I want, and this includes this particular pop star. So when her memoir came out, I had to look at it, and wonder could she write as well as sing and songwrite? Well, yes, she can. So put on some of her tunes and open the page.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present. . . .Carole King

MichiganChet for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 30, 2012 · 8:00 PM PDT

2012/07/30 · 20:00

By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing—
"Nothing" is the force
That renovates the World—

Emily Dickenson

For this installment, I thought I would cover a writer who I have always liked because he unflinchingly covers the heavy issues of life, such as how people deal with catastrophe. It happens to all people, unless you're Mitt Romney (and I am not too sure Romney is more than semi-human). You see, I think that part of what makes us human is how we deal with the awfulness that happens in life, and how that paradoxically binds us togther - ideally - and yet also makes us fly apart.

It also seems to me appropriate in making sense of what happened in Aurora, which although I did not know anyone who was wounded or killed, I know Aurora pretty well, and lived there for some pretty formative years in my life. I know exactly in what part of town the movie theater was located in (it is actually close to where my girlfriend lived) and also where the assailant's booby-trapped apartment was; It is just around the corner from a site that used to be occupied by an Army Medical Center, and is now used by the University of Colorado. I used to live around there. It was a pretty nice place to live. Never thought I'd see it associated with this kind of horror. . .

Which brings us to the author I want to cover tonight. Someone who has long written about just what people confront when it is their family member or loved one that dies in a national tragedy. And what the burden of survivorship really is.

For those who do not know, let me introduce you to Russell Banks, and the Sweet Hereafter

Newer
Older

RSS

My Favorite Authors: Jonathan Swift and an updated Modest proposal

How Nice: Someone at The Economist takes down a racist bonehead

Indigo Kalliope: Poems From the Left: Elegy for a Mitthead

My favorite Authors: A return to Dr. Seuss, and an Indulgence of Sacrilege

My Favorite Authors: Larry Heinemann, Letting Us Know About the Scars of War

My Favorite Authors: Marguerite Feitlowitz, The Argentine Dirty War and the Terror of Words

My Favorite Authors: Christopher Hitchens and Confronting One's Own Mortality

My Favorite Authors: Barack Obama, the Audacity of the Man and the Conciliation of the President

My Favorite Authors: Paul Krugman, a prize for Cassandra and a clarity of economics

My Favorite Authors: Algernon Charles Swinburne; The Personal is Poetical

My Favorite Authors: Carole King "A Natural Woman". Just the kind I Like.

My Favorite Authors: Russell Banks Writes about the Futility of Blame and the Burden of Survival