A couple days ago I found this recording of Walt Whitman reading the first few lines of America, and I’ve been a little choked up since. Walt Freaking Whitman reading onto a wax cylinder recording! Until last week, I would have thought that about as likely as finding an old video of Lincoln, or getting email from John Wesley Powell.
What with the Whitman whatnot, I was reminded of an old tossed-off snark blog comment I made two years ago at Pandagon, in response to Amanda M. saying something to a misogynistic troll along the lines of very well, she contradicted herself.
And since Pandagon has switched servers and the free blogging service it had been on is unlikely to be there forever, I went looking for it to save it to my files. And this blog is pretty much my files. So here it is.
Real intellectual honesty is quoting Whitman:
Something snarkles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the left blogs I loved,
I will not go now on the comment threads to post,
I will not send the words from my keyboard to meet my comrades the snide,
I will not touch my brain to the Web as to other flesh to renew me.
O how can it be that the net itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you turds of God?
How can you furnish words you rubes of rightwing demagogues?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d ideas within you?
Is not each incontinent work’d over and over with sour dread?
Where have you disposed of the dumbasses?
Those Randoids who resent ST, The Next Generation?
Why do you write as gorged on foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of wit upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of your mom’s boyfriends.
2
Behold this troll post! behold it well!
Perhaps every byte was once thought up by a sick person–yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The ban lands noiselessly on the trolls in your garden,
The delicate spears of The Onion are reposted,
the Random Tens cluster together on the Friday morns,
The resurrection of the meme appears with mock groaning over the raves,
The whinge awakes over the sophist-tree and the right-zealot-tree,
The he-blogs blather mornings and evenings while the she-blogs give it a rest,
The hawks of poultry make omelets, break eggs,
The new-born of wingnuts appear, the pig is dropt from the sow, the
dolt from the blare,
Out of its little ads faithfully rise the Pajamas’ few greenbacks,
Out of its swill rises the yellow-bellied, the Lileks swoon in
the dooryards,
The intertubes are innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour grapes.
Hysterical! And well composed.
(By the way, I’m with you on finding the recording of Whitman. Wow! Great discovery.)
The Whitman recording is wonderful!
As is your verse. :)
Oh.
Apologies for the incorrect form-fillage.
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of your mom’s boyfriends.
Chris, that was rude. The rule is No Moms! I think there may be an it’s-ok-if-you-make-Maud-laugh exception to that rule, however, for which this qualifies. The thing that really made me laugh, though?
Out of its swill rises the yellow-bellied, the Lileks swoon in
the dooryards,
Now that is some high-class, pinpoint(and head)-accurate snark.
Thanks for sharing the Whitman recording. Some of it’s pretty hard to hear for the static (and my hearing loss) but I love the way he says “aaample”. It’s both very Midwestern and very evocative. That’s the great thing about hearing a poet read her/his own work. Individual words may have different weight than they did on the page. You hear the words differently in your head when you read a poem after that.