Like patriotism, Kipling is a last refuge of scoundrels. So Milrad Blagojevich recited a few lines from “If” in the course of declaring that he won’t [bleeping] quit his [bleeping] office, [bleep] you! Naturally, Kipling fans couldn’t resist the challenge to rewrite the poem with verses better suited to Blago himself. Claudia Rosett, whose coverage of the U.N. has made her an expert on corruption, offers a wonderful pastiche beginning:
If you can keep your job while all about you
Are fielding bribes and blaming it on you,
If you can duck the Feds while all men doubt you,
And bleep-ing show the charges are untrue,
If you can fight and not be tired by fighting,
Or, being wiretapped, profess surprise,
Or argue that there will be no indicting
Because it’s all a bleep-ing pack oflies. . . .
The version at Athens & Jerusalem can’t be quoted on a family friendly blog, as it portrays Blago’s distinctive verbal tic more directly. The versifier notes, “It’s much easier to make a line scan when you can just throw in obscenities wherever you want. I’m surprised Homer never used this technique.”
Blago is a comic turn. The serious side of this affair is summed up in the proverb, “Lie down with the dogs, and you get up with the fleas.” Before he skyrocketed to the Presidency, Barack Obama had two notable sets of associates: anti-American radicals and “Chicago Way” political fixers. He has been cutting his ties with the former at a furious pace. The latter he has pretended not to see, and they may not be so easy to dispose of. We’ve been told that the President-elect has been perusing biographies of Abraham Lincoln. May I suggest that he might find more pertinent instruction by reading up on the administrations of Warren Harding and Ulysses S. Grant?
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