I love that poetry is the medium here and it just works
I’d settle for somone not from the fucking millionaire / billionaire class to start with.
Most of those requirements are just working class problems :/
IMO that’s exactly what this is asking for - just the long way around.
Reminding us of the kinds of experience that make someone working class in the first place.
completely agree
That sounds a lot like my favorite poster.
Excerpt:Data
will help us remember, but will it let us forget? It will help politicians get elected, but will it help them lead? It will help companies make products addictive, but will it help us get free once we’re hooked? It will help advertisers see people as statistics, but will it help us remember those statistics are people? It will help banks prevent credit card fraud, but will it help us stay out of debt? It will help credit card companies predict the impending collapse of a marriage, but will it keep our marriages from falling apart? It will help parents make kids genetically perfect, but will it help us love them regardless? It will help high-frequency traders sell stocks in nanoseconds, but will it help protect markets from feedback loops in their programs? It will help meteorologists predict storms and tornadoes, but will it help us rebuild the homes of survivors? It will help biologists map the migration of fish, but will it keep us from overfishing the oceans?
(…)
It will help us keep count of everything in our lives, but will it help us understand that not everything that counts in our lives can be counted? It will help us see the world as it is, but will it help us see the world as it could be?Man, that’s a long list of requirements.
We need a cover of Je veux with this text !
Why is “and an attitude” and “and that nasty” crossed out?
I think it just doesn’t flow with the rest of the poem. We currently have a president with an attitude and its not great. Also “that nasty hospital food” tonally just don’t feel like it fits IMO.
I think it suggests that all black women have attitudes and all hospital food is nasty.
And only one of those is true.
I thought maybe (given the date) that they thought about the “attitude” the current president displayed, and realized they didn’t want that anymore.
Edit: Nevermind, it was written in 1992 apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_want_a_president
Doesnt it more so suggest people with bad teeth have an attitude?
We can figure this out. We just need a white-board and markers, maybe some lab coats and stethoscopes!
Pins and red string are also essential
Oh wow, good find
I want that too, but maybe not all of those things at the same time. I’d feel really bad for them.
no, no. we MUST create this sacrifice-person to lead us. this is our shot.
I think you invented Jesus
It didn’t turn out so well the first time.
Text:
I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of. two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air conditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported.
I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth
and an attitude, someone who has eatenthat nastyhospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.Thematically and stylistically it’s very Ginsburg
You forgot to cross out
and an attitudeandthat nasty, but great transcript otherwise.Thanks for the proofread, edited
I really appreciate those edits, too. I can hear that thought process.
That is one awesome poem.
Strong The New Colossus energy:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
That poem legit brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.
Even more so now than before.
I think mr orange rapist wants to get rid of that plaque
In 2019, during the first Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli, whom Trump appointed as acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, revised a line from the poem in support of the administration’s “public charge rule”, which would have rejected would-be immigrants who lacked adequate income and education to support themselves. Cuccinelli would have rewritten the caveat as, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge”. He later suggested that the “huddled masses” should be European, and he downplayed the poem as “not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.”
Well, let’s include this, with the following message to whoever originally wrote it: We hope you’ll get in touch with Barbara Burgower at Straight Arrow Books in order that we may properly credit this piece of writing and carry the customary copyright of permissions and acknowledgments in future editions of this book.
senator mcgovern had hinged his l
xxxxcxx whole campaign on oppostion to the vietnam war,xxxxxxxxxxxxhoping to pursuade americans of its immorality and awakenong in them a sense of outrage and shame, he tried to demonstrate that the continuing american presnece in vietnam, the bombing and thexxxxxxsuport of what he denounced as a corrupt dictatorship was an indication ofxxxaxxxxxmoral collapse in thexunited states. He did not balme the people but the nixon administration / but the people did notxxxxxrespond to his appeals, ironically yesterday morning he voted here in support of a localxxxxxproposition to outlwa the killing of a small bird known as the @mourning dove@ last night, as the nixon landslide gathered momentum that is precisely what heorge mcgovern became—a mourning dove.i
xxxxxasked him if the worst happened whether he would run again and he said: @emphantically: no i will not. i shall stay in the senate but xxx someone else will have to carry on what I began.@frewuently in the last two weeks, senator mcgovern had spoken of a young p black man who
xxxxxxpredicted that the election was going to break his heart because he was going to g find out that the american people were not as high minded as he thought they were/typically, mr. mcgovern challenged this view,xsaying that he believed in the goodness and decency of the people and that they would respond to their own consciences.but the election did break his heart after all. he thought he saw
xxxfaces glowing with hope xx that the country would aim for higher standards, yearing for peace and an edn to the domestic anguish. but the voters turned their backs on him.I’d appreciate that quote more if you could link the original context. It’s very hard to parse
This is how I see the comments:
I was intentionally being a little bit cryptic, but it’s from “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72,” from the November chapter. It is one of the absolutely crucial books to read if you want to know about the American political process, at least the 20th century form of it.
I apologize, I thought there was some sort of weird formatting error. Rereading it with a clearer mind and eyes I realize that was intentional
That isn’t something I’d have gone out of my way to find and read but I’ll check it out after having a recommendation dropped in my lap. My local library only has it on audiobook. 17 hours! Great for a road trip 😄 it seems interesting, and by a very interesting author nonetheless
Yeah. I’m pretty sure the edition I read did not include all the strikeouts and misspellings, but for some reason the machine text I could find did, and I like this version of it better.
It was giving me very “House of Leaves” vibes, though I haven’t read that one either. Given the context I can see how those errors (?) add to the environment of the topic. It is still very jarring but I think Mr. Thomson would appreciate the way it reads
This is beautiful and necessary.
This is magnificent.
Got my vote!
CAUTION: this shit rh some 🔥