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The Bush Administration in Rhyme
Random House
June 2004
128 pages ISBN: 1400062888 Hardcover
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Fiction Poetry
Does the Bush Administration sound any better in rhyme? In
this biting array of verse, it at least sounds funnier.
Calvin Trillin employs everything from a Gilbert and
Sullivan style, for describing George Bush's rescue in the
South Carolina primary by the Christian Right ("I am, when
all is said and done, a Robertson Republican"), to a
bilingual approach, when commenting on the President's
casual acknowledgment, after months of trying to persuade
the nation otherwise, that there was never any evidence of
Iraqi involvement in 9/11: "The Web may say, or maybe
Lexis-Nexis / If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas." Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but with the
people around him--Supreme Commander Karl Rove and
Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Nanny Dick Cheney
("One mystery I've tried to disentangle: / Why Cheney's head
is always at an angle . . .") The armchair warriors Trillin
refers to as the Sissy Hawk Brigade are celebrated in such
poems as "Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?" and "A Sissy
Hawk Cheer" ("All-out war is still our druthers-- / Fiercely
fought, and fought by others."). Trillin may never be poet laureate--certainly not while
George W. Bush is in office--but his wit and his political
insight produce what has been called "doggerel for the ages."
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