What's in a name

Crazily-hazily
John Allen Muhammad
Another psychopath
Playing his games.

Crimes aside, in matters
Nomenclatorial
Why do these murderers
All have three names?

While I’m not actually suggesting that Muhammad intended his actions as games, the “games” in question refer both to Muhammad’s crimes and to his courtroom antics during his latest trial. The Beltway sniper attacks had a violent video-game feel to them, and Muhammad’s turn as his own attorney was apparently punctuated by outbursts in which he quoted Mark Twain and Groucho Marx.

In writing this entry, I definitely bumped up against a major limitation of this form. I picked the subject quickly, but struggled with the angle. Everything seemed just a little too tasteless. So I went with a relatively unimportant element of Muhammad’s story—his name. I have wondered more than once whether Muhammad (and his then-teenage protégé/accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo) actually went by all three names, or whether this was a media thing. While there are numerous exceptions (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy), infamous personalities are frequently referenced with middle name included, regardless of whether that is how they self-identify*. While I suppose it’s helpful to all the other John Gacys out there that the serial killer is always John Wayne* Gacy, it does seem strange


* “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh did not use the surname, Lindh.
** It seems that “Wayne” is an abnormally common middle name among convicted murderers.

A star is rising...

Birthily-worthily
Baby Brangelina
In-utero presence
Caused quite a stir.

Gynecological
Messianism led
Pilgrims to flock east with
Gold and with myrrh.

Shiloh* Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born this weekend to parents Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. There’s nothing new or remotely interesting I can say about the cult of celebrity in the United States. All I can do is marvel at how many non-tabloid news outlets sent teams to Namibia to cover “Brangelina” while they (it?) were awaiting the birth of their daughter. I can also bemoan the nauseating trend of merging celebrity names to make one uber-celebrity, thereby further removing celebrities from the status of mere human beings. And I can fear that some celebrities—long considered by many to be American royality—seem increasingly to be viewed with the divinity that historically attended many monarchs.

*After completing this poem, I learned that “Shiloh is generally understood to mean Messiah.”

The Smartest Guys in the Room*

Greedily-weedily
Enron's own Kenny-boy
Screwed his employees to
Make himself rich.

Thanks to the jury's forced
Accountability,
Kenny will soon be his
New cellmate's bitch.

This is a little more mean-spirited than double-dactyls really should be. And it's inaccurate. Neither Ken Lay nor Jeff Skilling is going to be sentenced until September, so no one is getting a cellmate any time soon. And, of course, the federal penitentiary to which they are sentenced will likely be of the country club variety. But that's not really the point. The poem is mean-spirited because I find the Enron criminals to be so extraordinarily reprehensible.

The crimes for which Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted did an enormous amount of harm to Enron employees and investors. (And the employees are thrilled by the convictions.) But I am equally, if not more outraged by the crime for which no one at Enron faced any accountability -- the manufactured California energy crisis, or the rape and pillage of California. I could rant about this at length, but that would undermine the whole trying-to-keep-these-posts-short thing. Suffice it to say that I am quite pleased that Enron's leadership is facing justice for at least some of their crimes. And someday, if anyone ever decides that the American people actually have the right to know who creates national policy, I'd really like to find out if Ken Lay helped create the nation's energy policy back in 2001.

*This is the (partial) title of a book and documentary about Enron's rise and fall.

Strange bedfellows

Higgledy-piggledy
Rep. William Jefferson
Proclaims his innocence,
Swears he will fight.

Frozen cash highlights his
Indictability;
Feds in his office u-
Nites left and right.

Louisiana Democrat, William Jefferson, is under investigation for accepting bribes. Despite the fact that $90,000 cash was found in his home freezer, Jefferson maintains his innocence and recently refused a request by Democratic Party leadership that he relinquish his position on the House Ways and Means Committee. The search of his office by the FBI, however, is what's drawing the most attention to his situation. Republican House Leadership is outraged by what they deem to be egregious Executive disregard of the Separation of Powers Doctrine. Given that the Bush Administration has characterized itself by repeatedly breaching this doctrine, it's interesting that Dennis Hastert et al. are suddenly disturbed. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the Jack Abramoff investigation.

A little self-analysis might help

Hostilely-jostilely
Border Security
Fences and soldiers and
Punitive Laws.

Might we approach this less
Militaristically
Revisit NAFTA or
Explore the cause?

As Memorial Day weekend approaches, Congress is under increasing pressure to pass a comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. The Senate is less fixated than the House on punitive measures. But both sides seem to agree on matters such as building a fence and employing National Guard troops to reinforce border security. While both bodies are fixated on the legitimate matters of managing immigration and border security, neither seems to be willing to look at how U.S. trade policy contributes to economic conditions in other countries that lead to mass emigration. Journalist Molly Ivins put it beautifully:

"It does not take great economic acumen to realize that Mexico was damaged by NAFTA, that the surge in immigration has been caused by our own selfish and stupid trade policies, which benefit few of us."

Fixating on the problem without acknowledging or addressing the underlying causes makes it seem pretty clear that we don't really care about solving the problem.

Pining for the Cold War

Scarily-Warily
Alberto Gonzales
Menaces journalists
(Print and tv).

But perhaps measures so
Machiavellian
Seem less like DOJ,
More KGB.

On Sunday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated that "the government will not hestitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation." This statement was made in the context of a discussion of how reporters could be prosecuted for printing leaked information that compromised national security--I assume by his standards. The current administration seems to be working from the playbook of the former Soviet Union these days: we justify torture, wiretap Americans without warrants, monitor domestic phone records, and threaten to prosecute journalists for reporting the misdeeds of the government. And these are the things we know. It makes me a little nostalgic for the days when the US government used to associate these types of actions with our enemies rather than claiming them as patriotic.

It has a good beat...

I follow the news regularly and form opinions about what I read. Like untold number of others, I occasionally write down my opinions and observations. Lately, I've also been writing double-dactyls pretty regularly. So I decided to see if I can regularly compose a double dactyl about a major figure or story currently in the news.

The double-dactyl* or "higgledy-piggledy" is a nonsense poem that conforms to a rigid structure and rhyme scheme. Invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1951, the poems have eight lines (two stanzas, each of which is comprised of three lines in dactylic dimeter, and one that is one dactyl plus one stressed syllable). The first line is nonsense words, the second is the subject of the poem (usually a proper noun), and one line in the second stanza is a single double-dactylic word. Additionally, the fourth and eighth lines must rhyme.

The news is often depressing. Double-dactyls, however, are pithy, usually humorous, and often profane. And, as someone close to me noted (in her first double-dactyl, no less), "dactylic syllables/sound like a waltz." So commenting on the news double-dactylically provides the means to make the news a little light--and a little melodic.

To begin with an example, I could have published the following in 2003:

Lazily-dazily
Play-acting President
"Mission Accomplished!" the
banner proclaimed.

When this proved untrue, Bush
Characteristically
Pointed his finger, and
Shifted the blame.

The rhyme is mildly tortured, but the idea is clear.

And now for today's news:

Despite the devastation of New Orleans and the woefully inadequte evacuation, the displacement of many of Mayor Nagin's supporters, and the fallout from the Mayor's unfortunate "chocolate city" comments, Mayor Ray Nagin recently won re-election as Mayor of New Orleans. What was expected to be an easy win a year ago, became a narrow--and not entirely expected--victory over Lt. Governor, Mitch Landrieu.

Higgledy-piggledy
New Orleans Mayor Nagin
Biblical flooding 'most
Washed him aside.

Surfing the waters of
Ethnocentricity
Ray's opportunities
Rose with the tide.

(This particular poem highlights a drawback in using this rigidly structured form of poetry to comment on serious events: it's easy to sacrifice content for form. The language above can easily be interpreted to insinuate that Mayor Nagin responded to Hurricane Katrina opportunistically. However, I am merely suggesting that in the end, despite some significant missteps, he rode out the literal and figurative storms quite successfully.)

*I thank Joel Derfner for introducing me to this verse form last summer.