ROYAL THOUGHTS

From Straight Up's poet laureate, we received this message: "Ever consider running something critical of our president?" And so, per Leon ("Our Calvin Trillin") Freilich:

George W. Bush sometimes suggests that he abandoned reading newspapers when he moved into the Oval Office ... [but he] is known for devouring the sports section. -- USA Today 5/13/2004

PRINCE GEORGE OF D.C. SOLILOQUIZES

To read or not to read: that is the question.
Whether 'tis more compassionate to skip
The gloomy news from Iraq, with all attendant
Accounts of necessary prisoner
Encouragements to join the Coalition
Of the Concerned; or to leave to Rummy,
My heart-close aide and even other self,
The ticklish task of scissoring the clips
That 'scape from my subjects' baser element
And splash like thick, untreated sewer blood
The already-toxic major newspapers
Of the land. To read; to come across
Nay-sayers who never had to bloat a budget
To keep my mighty armies in the field
Warring 'gainst the Devil's own brigades,
Heathen bands of misbegotten brothers,
Craven looters sans the decency
To contribute to my noble party's coffers.
And who will side in the scurvy newspapers
With my fellow troops, my comrades in the trenches
And four-star hotels whose fate, long 'twixt with mine
Since my salad days as a battle-ready fighter
Pilot in the time of my father-King's excursion
Into the sandy landscape one bomby day
Of the still-perfidious Iraqians.
To read the newspapers? And risk the loss
Of action in their hemisemidemi
Pile of gross inaccuracies? Why, look you,
Souvenir pictures -- private, and personal property --
Printed for all the merry moochers to moon
Over and criticize as if my soldiers'
Own sweet memories of a glorious time
Belonged to anyone but them. Shame!
Shame on the peeping Toms of the daily press;
Excepting, methinks, those sporting gentlemen,
Wholly innocent of the Eastern beau monde's
Malevolent taint, who write about Barry Bonds.