ATTACK LIMERICKS IN RED, WHITE AND GREEN

Amid the Irish tunes and the St. Paddy's Day celebrations and all the world's parades, when even the Chicago River turns green, the U.S. presidential campaign has gone from attack ads to attack limericks.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie released this tribute to Democratic nominee John Kerry:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose misstatements could fill up a bucket.
Oft the truth he has bent, Like his "Irish descent."
Of his record he says, "I'll just duck it."

The Democratic National Committee responded in kind:

There also was a Yank from Connecticut,
Who utterly lacked any etiquette.
He claimed Texas blood,
Threw the truth in the mud,
Think his word is his bond? Don't bet on it.

And Straight Up reader Leon Freilich released this non-limerick attack on Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, where the 243rd annual parade down Fifth Avenue honoring the patron saint of Ireland steps off clan by clan at 11 a.m. ET in an unbroken tradition that began on March 17, 1762.

WHERE ARE THE SINS OF YESTERYEAR?

You can't smoke inside, you can't drink outside:
What's happened to the bar?
Once it was another home,
Now it's just bizarre

Inside-outside, outside-inside:
The place makes gray matter spin;
The suddenly hapless smoker-drinker
Takes it on the chin.

Why couldn't the city in all its wisdom
Tackle an enterprise zone
Or grime in the streets or subway malfunctions--
And leave bad enough alone?

When the mayor replies with his brand of poesy, we'll let you know.

March 17, 2004 8:43 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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