Lit Crit

…of Al Gore’s poetry:

I have read worse poems than “One Thin September,” but not all that many. It is a dull, anaphoric litany riddled with malapropisms and marred by an unabashed tendency to pure bathos — no different from his prose. Close assessment of the piece might offer a corrective to those who continue to venerate its author.

…In sum, “One Thin September” is a dreadful piece of unmitigated fustian in every possible respect — tonal, structural, lexical, semantic, metaphorical — and should never have seen the light of print. If anyone ever needed fresh evidence for Al Gore’s want of discernment and unstinting self-infatuation, this is it. Those who don’t have the time to wade through 400 pages of largely tendentious argument and special pleading may content themselves by reading the poem. It tells them all they need to know. And the irony is unmistakable. For no matter how reluctantly, we owe him a debt of gratitude for this unintended exhibition.

One of my tests of someone’s political judgement is whether or not they any longer take Al Gore seriously.

6 thoughts on “Lit Crit”

  1. “One of my tests of someone’s political judgement is whether or not they any longer take Al Gore seriously.”

    Where does that leave those who NEVER took him seriously? Here at Casa de Schtumpy, I taught all the little Schtumpters to see a fool for the fool they are. We used Al as THE best example of foolishness full of itself.

    It just seemed appropriate.

  2. Remember P. J. O’Rourke’s evisceration of Jimmy Carter’s abominable attempts at poetry?

    What is it with these talentless hacks? Do they have the blind self-confidence of the incurably stupid, or have they just surrounded themselves with lackeys for too long?

  3. pst,
    you’ve hit it on the head. They are so totally surrounded by yes men, yes women, yes GLADDites, that they’ve lost all sense of the possibility of being wrong or of having any human failings.

    It’s the same daily “bubble life”, that allows them to really think that anyone who disagrees with them WANTS dirty water, WANTS all minorities dead, WANTS etc. It’s why Jimmy Carter is THE first American ex-President to openly and regularly expound on the failings of those who came after him. It’s why they thought ALL the people screaming at them over Obamacare just HAD to be, coulod
    only be right-wing, Christian, Republican voters.

  4. What can you expect from someone whose earliest memories are of his momma singing him to sleep at night with the “Look for the Union Label” song as a lullaby?

    (Side note: “Look for the Union Label” was written in the mid 1970s, when Al Gore was in his twenties. If his momma was still singing him to sleep every night, that explains a lot about him.)

  5. May I attempt to match his genius and profundity?

    The bore in Gore/
    has dribbled to the core/
    since days of yore/
    when, while minding the Union store,/
    he tried to roar, but instead found himself/
    shown the door, as if he were no more/
    than just another carbon footprint /
    on the floor./
    Then, with failure stuck in the craw/
    This sadly frustrated media whore/
    noticing the rest of us, both rich and poor/
    Confected his desperate little phoney war./

    Num.

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