Speaker John Boehner may keep a wind-up monkey to express how he feels jerked around by the rightwing Freedom Caucus, which prompted him to resign. There is a similar puppet in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” also signifying emasculation and humiliation.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Boehner’s Monkey and Ellison’s Sambo
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Freedom Congress, GOP, House of Representatives, Invisible Man, John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, leadership, Paul Ryan, Ralph Ellison Comments closed
My Cries Cannot Pierce Thy Silent Ears
George Herbert poetry is admirable in the way he wrestles with his spiritual doubts. He may owe a debt to “The Book of Job,” where we also see such wrestling.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Denial", Book of Job, despair, George Herbert, Prayer, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Comments closed
John Lennon’s Utopian Vision
John Lennon would turn 75 today. “Imagine” lives on, an instance of utopian thinking that challenges us to look around us.
Hillary before Judges Like Tolstoy’s Pierre
The Congressional Committee to Investigate Benghazi is like the military tribunal in “War and Peace” that questions Pierre. It is interested only in answers to lead to conviction.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Benghazi, Benghazi investigation, Congress, GOP, Leo Tolstoy, politics, War and Peace Comments closed
Bernie, Black Lives Matter, & Invisible Man
Bernie Sanders’s early missteps with Black Lives Matter, which bewildered him and his followers, is explained in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged angry middle, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump, Invisible Man, Race, race issues, Ralph Ellison Comments closed
Thee Thyself We Cannot Lose
In a powerful four-line poem, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge sums up the main lesson in the Book of Job: even when we suffer, we still have God.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "After St. Augustine", Book of Job, God's peace, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Suffering Comments closed
This Time Grendel Chose Umpqua
Every time there is another mass killing, this time at Umpqua Community College, I turn to “Beowulf.” Few works understand such violence as well as this medieval Anglo-Saxon epic.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Beowulf, Ceremony, Charles Harper Mercer, gun control, Leslie Marmon Silko, mass shootings, NRA, serial killers, Umpqua College shooting Comments closed
