{"id":4186,"date":"2003-01-22T08:46:16","date_gmt":"2003-01-22T13:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4186"},"modified":"2003-01-22T08:46:16","modified_gmt":"2003-01-22T13:46:16","slug":"better_or_verse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/22\/better_or_verse.html","title":{"rendered":"Better or Verse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dedicated to Harold Pinter, who’s been kind enough to bless us (or the Guardian<\/i><\/a>) with his poetic wisdom, here is a poem inspired by his own latest work.<\/p>\n

Here they go again,
\nThe Euroliterati in their sackcloth parade
\nChanting their ballads of doom
\nAs they bleat across the big world
\nDamning whatever America’s doing at the moment.
\nThe gutters are clogged with the dead from the regimes they support:
\nThe Bosnians in Yugoslavia
\nThe Kurds in Iraq
\nThe women in Afghanistan
\nThe dissenters in Cuba
\nThe students in China
\nThe citizens of North Korea
\nThe prisoners in the gulags
\nThe ones who worked in the wrong office buildings on the wrong day in New York.
\nThe has-been poets use words to try and cut.
\nTheir heads are full of sand
\nTheir ideas a pile of dirt
\nTheir idols stained and dusty
\nTheir bright lights have gone out and your nose
\nSniffs only the pong of their dead theories
\nAnd all the dead air is alive
\nWith the smell of their impotent fury.<\/i> <\/p>\n

Thank you. I’ll be here all week …<\/p>\n

(via Volokh <\/a>and Andrea<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dedicated to Harold Pinter, who’s been kind enough to bless us (or the Guardian) with his poetic wisdom, here is a poem inspired by his own latest work. Here they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":51820,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/23\/theres-wrong-and-theres-really-wrong.html","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":0},"title":"There's wrong, and there's REALLY wrong","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 23-Jul-15 1:40pm","format":false,"excerpt":"And also there's right, and there's really right. 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Shooting anybody is wrong","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 14-Jun-17 6:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"For all the disdain I might have for GOP congresscritters, and for politicians in general, trying to kill people is a much greater moral wrong. And from a pragmatic standpoint, the damage this sort of action can have on society and politics is profound. If this is, in fact, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131026,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/08\/oops-wrong-island.html","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":3},"title":"Oops. Wrong island","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 8-Jul-16 5:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Heh. View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29090,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/03\/because-what-could-possibly-go-wrong-wait-we-know-the-answer-to-that.html","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":4},"title":"Because what could possibly go wrong? \u00a0Wait, we know the answer to that …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-Aug-12 8:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Because what could possibly go wrong? \u00a0Wait, we know the answer to that ...HAMMOND: When they opened Disneyland in 1956 nothing worked.MALCOLM: Yeah, but, John, if the \u2018Pirates of the Caribbean\u2019 breaks down, the pirates don\u2019t eat the tourists.Reshared post from +Jim Feig Embedded Link DailyTech - Report: Eccentric Billionaire\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26061,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/04\/hes-an-atheist-no-hes-a-muslim-no-hes-the-wrong-kind-of-chri.html","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":5},"title":"He's an Atheist! 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Even when he talks about Jesus, he gets skewered by the Right for talking about Jesus in a way that they don't like. #ddtb Embedded Link Obama Cites Jesus and the Right\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}