I’ve mentioned in several recent columns that whenever I’m feeling a little down, I can always cheer myself up by watching a few videos of election night coverage in 2016 and in 2024.
But last night, as I was thinking about how miserable we all were four years ago, it occurred to me to go back and read some of my columns from January of 2021, just to remember how grim the beginning of Biden’s reign was, as we prepare to celebrate its end.
What I found is that even while they were funny in parts (unexpectedly!), there was a lot of dread just beneath the surface. And that makes our current happiness all the sweeter. Since many readers may not have been following the CO site four years ago, I thought I’d share a few excerpts with you this week, starting with part of my column from 1/25/21:
“I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t watch a minute of live tv on inauguration day, because I knew what I would have seen if I’d watched. A sickeningly obsequious media, a doddering old man slurring his way through a string of banalities projected in very large print on a teleprompter, and some of the worst people in North America elated by the triumph of a noxious ideology over the imperfectly realized but heartfelt ideals of our great nation.
Though it felt more like a Lamentations kind of day, my thoughts actually went to the famous passage from Ecclesiastes (or, as Joey Gaffes calls it, “eckle-stopholeese. Sorry, expialidocious. You know, you know the thing. The one right before the Palms.”):
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
And for me, Wednesday was a time to mourn, and a time to cast away stones, and a time to vow to lick ‘em tomorrow. Also a time to watch 8 hours of HGTV shows on the DVR, and to drink Scotch, and to mourn some more.
So when I woke up Thursday – mostly sober, with a yard full of stones, and knowing how to renovate a cramped and tired single-story into an open floorplan with a chef’s kitchen and a farmhouse sink – I cautiously dipped into a few podcasts and websites I trust, and got a glimpse of the tragicomic farce that was the inauguration of Joe Biden.
I was sad to see that once again, so many violent conservatives raged out of control, showing grave disrespect for a new president’s inauguration. Here are some excerpts from the Reuters story I read on Thursday:
“Black-clad activists among hundreds of demonstrators protesting Biden’s swearing-in clashed with police a few blocks from the White House, in an outburst of violence rare for an inauguration. At least 217 people were arrested in the melees, police said.
The burst of civil disorder followed a fierce presidential campaign that left the country divided. In the violence, knots of activists in black clothes and masks threw rocks and bottles at officers wearing riot gear, who responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades as a helicopter hovered low overhead.
At one flash point, a protester hurled an object through the passenger window of a police van, which sped away in reverse as demonstrators cheered. Multiple vehicles were set on fire, including a black limousine. A knot of people dragged garbage cans into a street a few blocks from the White House and set them ablaze…”
Oh, I’m sorry. Those were not actual quotes from a real Reuter’s story about Biden’s inauguration last week – they were actual quotes from a real Reuter’s story about Trump’s inauguration 4 years ago. (The only edit I made was changing Trump’s name to “Biden” in the first sentence.)
Thanks to the MSM’s egregious bias, I’d forgotten that that even happened. This January 6th is a day that will go down in infamy because of the Democrat-lite violent actions of a few hundred bonehead Trump supporters, but there will be no comment on millions of leftists looting and rioting for 6 months all across the country.
Don’t forget it: in the very first hours of the Trump presidency, violent leftist thugs were already committing assaults, arson and property damage, and hundreds had to be arrested.
But some goofball wearing Viking horns broke into a government building, so we had to have a grim, militarized inauguration in the middle of a mostly empty capitol.
That being said, the mood was just about appropriate to the sadness of what was happening. Though the MSM lickspittles declared that there were no cheering crowds only because of covid, does anybody really believe that?
Or is the more logical explanation that NO ONE is enthusiastic about Joe Biden, and he couldn’t draw a crowd to save his life? (Which explains why all summer, when leftists were turning out by the tens of thousands for daily “We hate America!” riots and “Criminals are our heroes!” rages, Biden was talking to dozens of misfits and misanthropes in a series of strip mall parking lots, and being continually startled when they honked their horns each time he made it through a paragraph without collapsing.)
There were barricades, and empty streets, and some terrible slam poetry.
And by the way, you can track America’s decline through the quality of poetry associated with presidents. Walt Whitman wrote four poems about the death of Lincoln (among them “O Captain, My Captain” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) that are still worth reading today.
Gifted poet Robert Frost read his poem, “The Gift Outright” at JFK’s inauguration.
Over 30 years later, mediocre poet (at best) Maya Angelou wrote a mediocre piece for Bill Clinton’s inauguration. It is justifiably forgotten now, but I remember banal repetitions of “a rock, a river, and a tree.” Poetry interpretation is subjective, but my take was that Slick Willie liked to take his interns to picnic at a river, where he was hard as a rock, and they ended up climbing a tree to get away from him.
But I’m more of a prose guy, so that might be way off.
Anyway, Biden’s inaugural poem was delivered by an unknown young woman, and of course the media is now swooning over her, and she’ll probably get rich and famous over this “poem.”
But, to paraphrase a line attributed to Dorothy Parker, this isn’t a poem to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Here are three consecutive lines from the poem, chosen at random:
“We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.
And the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it.”
Off the top of my head: “the belly of the beast” is a tired cliché; “beast” and “peace” don’t rhyme; “just is” and “justice” don’t rhyme; the third line changes verb tense in a way that doesn’t make sense. (By the way, my last sentence rhymed better than anything in this terrible poem.) Also, there is no referent for the “it” in the last line – what can that line possibly mean?
On the other hand, “knew it” and “do it” at least rhyme, even if they are stupid.
Good lord! At the rate we’re going, if Comma-la manages to get re-elected in 2024, her inaugural poem is going to start with, “There once was a man from Nantucket.”
I know that some of you are probably thinking, “Sure, Martin, you may be a hilarious genius, an amazing father and husband, and a role model for us all, not to mention a fine figure of a man. But you’re no poet, and you probably couldn’t do any better.”
To which I say, hold my Scotch and stand back, as I compose a poem – live, right now, this very minute — that is more fitting for the inauguration of Joe Biden than the actual putrid poem above:
Ode to Joe
C’mon man, he’s got a plan.
Look fat– don’t question that.
You know, the thing,
Ring a ding ding.
He defeated Corn Pop
Zippity boop bop.
Don’t give him a quiz:
he don’t know where he is.
Stay in your lanes
Or he’ll put y’all back in chains.
Even Frank Luntz
Knows he’s a dunce.
Boom! Admit it: you feel pretty foolish right now for doubting me. Because that poem has all the hallmarks of deathless verse: the lines all rhyme, it works on multiple levels, and it contains a subtle allusion to Frank Luntz.
Where was I? Oh yeah, our long national nightmare, just getting started….
Finally, in a move that I’m afraid sets the table for much more of the same to come, a few hours after Joey Gaffes signed an executive order mandating that everyone wear a mask on federal land, he went to the Lincoln Memorial. Which is on federal land.
And what was Joey wearing? No, not a vacant expression.
Well, yes. That’s his look.
But let me rephrase that: What was he NOT wearing? If you guessed “pants,” you probably had a 50/50 chance of being right. But in this case, it was a mask.
When a reporter called out, “Where’s your mask?” Biden leapt and spun around, startled, and said, “Who are you? Where am I?” When he noticed the statue of Lincoln out of the corner of his eye, he leapt in the opposite direction, and said, “Who is that?! And why is he so huge? Oh no! Am I shrinking?!”
When an aide explained that he was not shrinking, and that the giant statue was of Lincoln — and then that it wasn’t a statue of Lincoln, Nebraska, but of Abraham Lincoln — Biden visibly calmed down.
Until a reporter called out, “You just made it illegal to be on federal land without a mask. But you’re on federal land, and you don’t have a mask.”
Biden once again leapt in fright, and said, “Where am I? What? Who are you?”
The reporter said, “I’m a reporter, and you’re breaking the law by not wearing a mask.”
And Biden raised his hands and felt his wrinkly, unmasked face, and shouted, “Ahhh! Arrest me!”
Then Dr. Jill took him by the hand, and pulled him toward the stairs. “Let’s go home. You need to get a good night’s sleep so you’ll be ready to get up tomorrow and start wrecking the country.”
And, scene.
Look on the bright side, people: we’ve survived 5 days. Only 3 years and 360 days more.
Avenatti/Hunter Biden 2024!”
Remember the sick feeling in our stomachs back then, CO Nation? Well now we’ve survived 3 years and 352 days. Only 13 more to go!
Remember: JOY cometh in the mornin’ (…of the 20th)!
Martin Simpson 