January 27, 2010

Moby Bill and Captain Barack

Too much obsession is a mistake.


"You see? You see? He beckons. He's dead but he beckons."

Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in the healthcare bill's whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal democrat could do, the solid white buttress of the 2,000 pages of the bill's bull smote the Democrats' port bow, till House and Senate reeled. Some in previously safe-seats fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged dodos, the heads of the Congressmen aloft shook on their reed-thin political necks. Through the breach of Brown, they heard the raging flood waters of wee-weed-off voters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume....

"The bill! The healthcare bill!- the second senate bill!" cried Obama from the oval office; "its blather could only be Democrat!"

Diving beneath the settling ship, the healthcare bill ran quivering under the keel of congress; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface of the House again, far off the other bow in the Senate, but within a few yards of Obama's oval office, where, for a time, it lay bloated and quiescent.

"I turn my body from the 50% job approval. What ho, PELOSI! let me hear thy yammer of reconciliation. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine administration; thou uncracked Emmanuel; and only press-bullied Gibbs; thou firm Axelrod and haughty Bo, and glorious Michelle! -- must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from reconciliation the last fond hope of meanest pollwrecked presidents?

"Oh, lonely president on lonely first and last term! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost hopelessness. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold and blathering fair-weather PUNDITS of my whole eviscerated legislative agenda, and top this one piled comber of the death of HEALTHCARE! whale sought all these lost seventy-five years! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale of a 2,000 page bill of bull; to the last I grapple to get thee passed by crook or by crook; from Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last political capital at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool of public option! and since neither can be mine, let me then blow to my presidency to pieces, while still chasing passage, though tied to thee, thou damned bill! Thus, I give up the teleprompter!"

(With deepest apologies to Herman Melville, Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. It's for the good of the Republic.)

Posted by Vanderleun at January 27, 2010 3:28 AM
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There is something wrong about the man who wants to help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, a brief, a need, a crying need, some where about the man-
Herman Melville

Posted by: james wilson at January 26, 2010 9:35 PM

Man, you're just burning lately.

And the bow to Melville is gracious of you, but if there's any justice people will be using your stuff in 150 years to flense the latest blowhard. Rave on.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at January 26, 2010 10:39 PM

"WE WILL TRY 'EM IN NEW YORK, I TELL YA-NO MATTER WHAT YOU PIONS SAY. HA, HA, HA, HA, HE, HE, HE"-Eric Holder

"Th-th-the-th-the-th-that's all, folks."-Bugs Bunny

Posted by: JD at January 27, 2010 5:10 AM

Bravo, Mr G. Let this post debut a literary series.
Next up, The N-word of the Narcissus"

"...like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries
to climb out into the air as inexperienced people
endeavor to do, he drowns." --Joseph Conrad

Posted by: Robert at January 27, 2010 7:46 AM

"What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad - Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and - Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as school-boys do to bullies, - Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!"

Posted by: Russell at January 27, 2010 10:58 AM

Ah, Moby Dick. It was several years before I realized there was no apostrophe 's' after 'Moby.'

Kinda changed the perspective and meaning of the book for me (hey, I was a kid). The most intriguing character to me was Quequeg, the chief harpoonist, who got the job not because his tool was bigger, but because he knew how to use it better than the others did theirs. Sunnabitch had tatoos all over his body -- I think even on his Pequod.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at January 28, 2010 10:24 AM