March 11, 2004

KERRY REELING

Even John Kerry’s taste in poetry tends towards the indecisive and uncertain:

There was Kerry flying from Boston to New Orleans on Friday, sipping tea for his hoarse throat and reeling off T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

"There are so many great lines in it," he said. "'Do I dare to eat a peach?' 'Should I wear my trousers rolled?'”

Do I like Israel’s security fence or don’t I? Should the US be divided over who served in Vietnam? Is unilateral miltary intervention a good thing or a bad thing? The poetry revelation is from Maureen Dowd’s useless Sunday column, wherein she notes:

When I gave George W. Bush a culture quiz in 2000, he gamely struggled to come up with one answer in each category, calling baseball his favorite "cultural experience."

T. S. Eliot himself may have been of similar mind. Still, as James Lileks reminds us, Kerry does have his supporters -- most of them unidentified and overseas:

Why does he think the Unnamed Foreign Leaders like him best -- because they have America's best interests at heart? They want to mire the United States in the tarpit of the United Nations again, and Kerry looks like the man to wade right in.

Europe can't fight its way out of a paper bag, because it spends half its money propping up its paper bag industry, and the other half on bureaucracies regulating the strength and thickness of paper bags. Europe can only be the equal of American power with the willing cooperation of a president who stays up late at night wondering whether chain-smoking leftists in cafes on another continent might greet his next state visit with giant mocking puppets.

They wouldn’t have mocked an earlier version of Kerry, lest he strafe those puppets with machine-gun fire and burn down their villages. Via WinterSoldier.com, here’s video of Kerry on NBC’s Meet the Press in April, 1971. Transcript:

Crosby Noyes: Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think that our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?

John Kerry: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed, in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written, well-established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zones, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

Today’s war hero previously described himself as a war criminal. Yet another flip-flop.

UPDATE. From the Washington Post’s editorial:

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said last week that he would have saved Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from forced exile. "I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period," Mr. Kerry said in an interview with the New York Times. Purposeful and decisive, no doubt, and useful as a riposte to Republican portrayals of him as a waffler. But on Feb. 24, when Mr. Aristide's fate still hung in the balance, Mr. Kerry did not sound quite so decisive.

There’s a shock.

UPDATE II. Hal G. P. Colebatch, who knows his poetry, finds a tiny weeny flaw in Kerry’s reading:

There is no such line as "Shall I wear my trousers rolled?" in "the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock."

The references to trousers are "I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" and "shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach. I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach/I have hear the mermaids singing, each to each./I do not think that they will sing to me ..."

It seems Kerry is even less decisive than Prufrock, who at least knew he was going to roll his trousers.

Posted by Tim Blair at March 11, 2004 11:38 PM
Comments

Now we know what both parties stand for:

Human rights, nuclear disarmament and feminism: Republicans

War atrocities and propping up dictators: Democrats

Thanks, John K., our choice is clear.

Posted by: Mike G at March 12, 2004 at 12:10 AM


"Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

Oh yes, I can quite see why he likes it.

Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at March 12, 2004 at 12:23 AM

There is no such line as "Shall I wear my trousers rolled?" in "the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock."

The references to trousers are "I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" and "shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach. I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach/I have hear the mermaids singing, each to each./I do not bthink that they will sing to me ..."

It seems Kerry is even less decisive than Prufrock, who at least knew he was going to roll his trousers.

Posted by: Hal GP Colebatch at March 12, 2004 at 12:40 AM

Senator Ketchup seems to under the impression that the American people are clamoring for a president who will grovel before the french.

Posted by: Latino at March 12, 2004 at 12:46 AM

He not only reads poetry -- "I love Keats, Yeats, Shelley and Kipling" -- he writes it.

Oh, for cute! If he's elected, maybe he and De Villepin can get together and write an epic on the glories of France.

This is most disturbing. If you swap Byron for Yeats in the above list, you have my favorite poet roster too. Kerry as soupy, moody romantic (with a bit of blood 'n guts thrown in)? I don't see it.

I'm surprised he copped to Kipling (my favorite), because as we all know Kipling was a vicious racist sexist Nazi (he put swastikas on his books! it's true!), so anyone who likes his poetry must be one too.

Posted by: Angie Schultz at March 12, 2004 at 12:53 AM

First, Kerry's Haiti comments remind me of an old joke from when I was a kid. The idea was that a young man seduced a girl by promising to "only put it halfway in" then proceeded, of course, to full entry. When she began to really enjoy what was happening, she began yelling, "All the way, all the way in." To which JF'nK replied, "Oh, no, a promise is a promise." Pretty much sums him up, doesn't it?

On the other hand, he has evidently copped to war crimes, for which there seems to be no time limit for prosecution. Maybe we can have him hauled off to the Hague, for a 2-3 year war crimes tribunal, right after they get done with Milosevic?

Which just led me to think, am I weird in that I don't want a President of the US who has less defense for committing war crimes than Milosevic? Is it just me?

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at March 12, 2004 at 01:16 AM

I never said that I disliked Wagner's operas
because he was an antisemite, and the same
would apply to T S Eliot's writings, but here's
a paragraph from an article in The Guardian (url
below the quote.)
Maybe someone will ask John Fietnam Kerry about this...

Eliot was not a typical anti-semite. He was instead an extraordinary anti-semite. He did not reflect the anti-semitism of his times, he contributed to it, even enlarged it. And with these poems he exhausted anti-semitism's (very modest) poetry-making reserves. So he did not persist in his anti-semitism as a poet. He did not repeat himself in this way.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,12887,972109,00.html

Posted by: Ira at March 12, 2004 at 01:56 AM


So, Modo thinks it's risible for an American to call baseball a cultural experience, huh? I guess she thinks Ken Burns is a moron.

Posted by: Dave S. at March 12, 2004 at 01:57 AM

Yeats, Keats, Kipling and Shelley. Name four poets even some dumb high school kid has heard of, Alex.

I might have been minimally impressed if he'd said something like, "Well, of course, I love Shakespeare's "Sonnets," and you know Milton's works are superb, and I much prefer Lattimore's translation of Homer's "Iliad," and really, MoDo, don't you think Virginia Woolf's prose reads like poetry?"

Keats and Yeats and Shelley and Kipling. Why, the son of a bitch didn't even name an 'Merkin poet, like Poe or Plath or...hell, he coulda' said Spaudling Gray wrote like a poet.

Stupid MoDo.

Did you see the part where he talks about the "great" poem he wrote about seeing a deer? A friggin' deer! Those stupid things, always running into the highway at dusk and wrecking the front end alignment of your car...

Posted by: ushie at March 12, 2004 at 02:31 AM

there's only one thing that can be clearly understood from all this: KERRY EATS PLASTIC PEACHES!

Posted by: random at March 12, 2004 at 02:35 AM

I hate to burst Kerry's bubble, but I don't remember that using a .50 caliber machine guns on your enemies in time of war is against international law.

Posted by: Wallace at March 12, 2004 at 02:37 AM

>Yeats, Keats, Kipling and Shelley. Name four poets even some dumb high school kid has heard of, Alex.

Not to mention, of all the poems Eliot wrote, the one that's sure to be in your high school literature textbook. (He probably loves James Joyce, too-- specifically "Araby.") Honestly, what a poser-- if you're going to be a pretentious poetaster, at least quote Osip Mandelstam or Wilfred Owun or somebody a little more unusual.

I bet Bush knows the lyrics to a few George Jones songs. That's more evidence of intellectual maturation than Kerry's frozen in prep school tastes.

Posted by: Mike G at March 12, 2004 at 02:45 AM

If I may offer a more apropos snippet from the Bard regarding the utterances of Mr. Kerry:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Posted by: charles austin at March 12, 2004 at 03:22 AM

I just thought that Senator Kerry was channeling the Allman Brothers when it came to peaches.

Posted by: charles austin at March 12, 2004 at 03:25 AM

In the poem, the protagonist wonders whether he dares to eat a peach.

A peach is often invoked to symbolize the female sexual organ. Thus, I doubt that Kerry would waffle on THAT subject.

He may waffle on EATING it, true, but I have no doubt that Kerry is a Peach Lovin' Man.

Posted by: Rick The Lawyer at March 12, 2004 at 04:41 AM

Actually the part that struck me was him writing a poem about the barren desolation of the desert. Mr Originality, he ain't!

Posted by: Pat Curley at March 12, 2004 at 04:57 AM

That struck me too - of every high school English textbook I experienced, "Prufrock" was the constant. (I guess they figured "The Waste Land" was too much for our tiny brains to handle). Having read most of his published poetry, I don't see where Eliot was any more antisemitic than any of the fashionable types of that period.

However, that being said, I dare Kerry to quote the part about "Rachel nee Rabinovitch/Tears at the grapes with murderous paws." I would pay to watch the ensuing press conference :).

Posted by: Sonetka at March 12, 2004 at 05:21 AM

Gahh. I meant to say, quote the POEM. Rachel nee Rabinovitch is not, of course, part of Prufrock.

Posted by: Sonetka at March 12, 2004 at 05:22 AM

Kerry has eight months to self destruct. He needs to learn to pace himself.

Posted by: Fred Boness at March 12, 2004 at 05:47 AM

>>sipping tea for his hoarse throat and reeling off T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Oh, dear. Dear, dear. Reeling it off, no less. Well, at least he wasn't wearing flannels and a boater and lisping "Prufrock" into a megaphone.

Posted by: AK at March 12, 2004 at 05:58 AM

I think I remember reading one of those 5 questions deals in the back of Vanity Fair a year or so ago in which he described his "Ideal Experience" (or moment or vacation, memory fails) as reading The Oddessy (or Iliad, I forget)in the original Greek on sailboat moored near an island in the Agean. Talk about a poser...

Posted by: Alex at March 12, 2004 at 08:58 AM

Has anyone noticed: on Vietnam Kerry generalises all allied soldiers are war criminals, himself too.

Now, unless one is mistaken, those with a criminal record, and Kerry confessed to having one, though not tried and convicted for his crimes, is he not thus barred from running for the highest office? I don't believe this is amere technicial point. In OZ, assuredly, those with criminal records are barred from running for seats in parlaiment.

Posted by: d at March 12, 2004 at 10:49 AM

My Eliot-inspired (The Hollow Men) prediction:

This is the way the Kerry campaign ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted by: Steve at March 12, 2004 at 11:54 AM

>I hate to burst Kerry's bubble, but I don't
>remember that using a .50 caliber machine guns
>on your enemies in time of war is against
>international law.


Actually, it is, oddly enough. The Geneva Convention specifies that .50 cal is illegal for use against enemy _personnel_. It is allowable only against _equipment_. I heard (this may be apocryphal) that recruits are told this in Basic, and then told, "Uniforms are equipment."

Obviously, the prohibition is universally ignored and never prosecuted, so to call it a "war crime" is technically true but rather silly.

Posted by: Dave S. at March 12, 2004 at 12:27 PM

Stop! get in a tank so I can shoot at you.

Posted by: Gary at March 12, 2004 at 03:41 PM

"There are so many great lines in it"

Good God, what is this man saying? The most memorable line in Prufrock is

"In the room the women come and go
Speaking of Michelangelo"

And I don't mean memorable in a good way!

Posted by: TimT at March 12, 2004 at 10:07 PM