Poetry eulogy proves editors aren't obsolete

Call it the case of the edited blog. In the print version of The Washington Post, there was a sober meditation on the uses and popularity of poetry, in the paper's appropriately named blog site, Compost, there was a rant.

Obviously, the blog was the brain fart of one Alexandra Petri. This young woman who professes omniscience after all of three years out of Harvard (two years less than my younger son, a fellow former Cantabrigidian), rose (descended?) in 2010 from Post intern to Post blogger. I see her byline occasionally on the op-ed page when even Eugene Robinson has nothing left to say.

Her piece in this morning's printed paper, headlined "Ode to an Obsolete Art," offered an uncharacteristically humble and sober outtake from the fact of a poem being read at the second Obama inauguration.

She calls poetry "a field that may well be obsolete." Lest one take her for her usual smart-ass self, she then declares

I say this lovingly as a member of the print media. If poetry is dead, we are in the next ward wheezing noisily.
But sometimes I worry about poetry.

I was delighted, as a journalist of more than three decades, to see that she seems to be maturing.

Reviewing the literary form's history she makes obligatory stops by Homer and Shelley. Predictably, she completely elides past the ancient rhyming and metered forms as mnemonic artifacts in a world in which most history was oral.

I would give you a link, but the moribund Post forces you to sign in to see the printed paper online (how's that for not getting it?). I just couldn't bother.

But wait!

Online, in the Compost site I found not one but two pieces, the first "Is Poetry dead?" Here is an unedited version of what saw print. Colorful, lazy and flatulently narcissistic as all blogs are (this is not journalism, folks!)

Here is the Alexandra Petri her Post patron fell in love with, all-knowing and arrogant as ever ...

Still I think there is a question to be asked. You can tell that a medium is still vital by posing the question: Can it change anything?
Can a poem still change anything?

You'll also find that the millions who spend their time commenting on newspaper websites had already given her the just recompense by the time the printed piece appeared. In her follow-up blog post ('Poetry is not dead,' says poetry), she sheepily warns that saying "poetry is dead" will result in zealots "sonetting" on one's lawn.

Petri's follow-up is a semi-chastised, quirkily funny blogiad, fine as far as it goes, but still not journalism.

The moral of the story?

Clearly, editors aren't obsolete. They can turn an online rant into a thoughtful printed piece. Not quite the lesson she intended, yet true.

The "cliff" is moral, not fiscal

At the close of this last business day of 2012 no deal appeared possible before the midnight deadline to avoid what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dubbed a "fiscal cliff." I defer to a young lady who requested a "lecture" on the subject to begin by stating that it's not actually a cliff and its nature is not economic, but moral.

Now that the United States is poised to go over it, very little of any serious consequence will happen at 12:01 am Eastern time, the time zone of Washington, D.C.

Federal automatic sequestrations will only take about 1 cent a month from every dollar spent for discretionary expenses. This will not affect Social Security, Medicaid, federal civilian or military pay and pensions, or veterans' benefits. More than likely something to prevent tax rises for the middle class and the end of unemployment insurance benefits for the long-term unemployed will pass within the first weeks of 2013.

Fiscally, that is, in terms of government spending, even the worst is nowhere near a cliff. It's more like a slight tilt. If it replaced a slide on the average playground, no one would use it because it would be nearly flat.

The cliff is moral. The United States will join the rather large club of nations whose governments cannot be relied upon to punctually raise revenue and pay debts.

This is not because revenues will not be raised — the top moneymakers will pay proportionally more. Nor is it because payments of debts will cease —do remember that every U.S. dollar remains legal tender for  "all debts public and private."

But Congress, specifically the Republicans in the House, engaged in what is known in economics as moral hazard: the willingness to take foolhardy risks because someone else will bear the consequences.

Documentary Displays More Anglo "Left" Learned Ignorance

Yesterday, upon the 30th anniversary of the murder of four American women in El Salvador, I was reminded of the way even alleged do-gooders from the navel-gazing Anglo culture steals everything from Hispania: the documentary Roses in December.

In case you missed it, the film is a heart-string-pulling manipulative piece of pseudo-lefty Catholic propaganda about the deaths on Dec. 2, 1982, of three American nuns and one non-vowed "missionary" from Ohio.

What's wrong with that, you ask? After all, the torture, rapes and murders were heinous acts of a dictatorial military regime supported by the United States government.

There's lots wrong: I'll tell you.

First of all, that very same week, as with hundreds of weeks that followed, between 300 to 500 Salvadorans were tortured, murdered and, if female, raped -- without notice or documentaries, anywhere. It had been happening in a crescendo since at least 1980.

Second of all, what was so effing great about four white Americans slumming their way to alleged sainthood? Sure, they we were providing food, shelter and medical care. But have you seen the little palaces with armed guards in which U.S. missionaries live? They have cars (that no one else has), they fly home for rest periods. No Salvadoran lives like they do -- oh, yes, the wealthy and their clergy pets do.

Third, the title of the movie "Roses in December" is a cultural theft of Mexican and Mexican-American popular culture for the purpose of idealizing four Americans in El Salvador. Note to Anglos: Mexico and El Salvador are different countries, have different customs, eat different things ... even if they all look the same to you.

Huh, you say?

"Roses in December" is the key phrase in the story of an Indian named Juan Diego on Dec. 9, 1531, when he said he saw a girl of about 15 or 16 surrounded by light. The young woman in the apparition spoke to him in his native Nahuatl asking that a church be built on that site in her honor. Juan Diego said he recognized her as the long venerated Virgin Mary, or Myriam of Nazareth, mother of Jesus.

When the bishop asked Juan Diego to demand a sign from the Virgin, to prove it was she, the native said the Virgin told her to gather flowers from what was normally a barren hill. He put them in his cloak to protect them and when he unrapped the cloak in front of the bishop and his staff, out came red Castilian roses in full bloom that were not native to Mexico and wouldn't normally blossom in December.

"Roses in December!" was the exclamation of those who saw it. Ever since, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans make a huge deal of this phrase. It was the divine sign the native peoples needed for strength; the Virgin did not appear to the Spanish conquerors, but to a humble Indian and she spoke in his native language.

Whether legend or true, the story is a unique and beloved artifact of Mexican culture. It was not made to be usurped by the next wave of conquerors, the Americans, making themselves into holy people for patching up the unholy mess their own government made in an entirely different country.

As to the four dead women -- especially the allegedly virginal pasty, pudgy business administration student by the name of Jean Donovan -- pity more didn't meet a similar fate.

Maybe if more American "holy" women had been tortured, raped and murdered, the 75,000 ordinary Salvadorans similarly killed until the peace pact of 1992 -- by which time "anti-Communist" military repression had lost the last shred of justification, if it ever had any -- might have continued their obscure, and to American eyes insignificant, little lives.