April 25, 2008

with Albert Gore as Chaucer’s Pardoner
by Bill Levinson

We understand that Barack Obama wants Albert Gore to serve as his environmental advisor. All the carnival barkers, medicine show proprietors, and rainmakers seem to be getting together in the same circus tent, and the price of admission is more than the American people can afford.

For reference, a rainmaker was a charlatan who would visit desperate communities during droughts. He would display an impressive array of regalia, which might have included artifacts that he had supposedly obtained from Native American medicine men, and offer to make it rain–for a price. The desperate farmers would give him their money, and he would then perform a ritual or rain dance. Then he would get as far away from town as he could before the drought-stricken people realized that no rain was forthcoming. (This was in an era when the term “tar and feathers” was taken literally.) If by chance it did rain, though, he would return to claim the credit and ask for letters of recommendation from the town council.

Albert Gore now has a similar racket, in which he is going to stop global warming in exchange for millions of dollars in royalties for “Earth in the Balance” and “An Inconvenient Truth.” Any results are almost certain to occur well beyond Gore’s lifetime so he, like the rainmakers of old, will not be accountable for any deficiencies in his self-serving and fraudulent agenda. He is therefore an ideal partner to Barack Obama, a cross between Sinclair Lewis’ phony evangelist Elmer Gantry and Shakespeare’s Jack Cade.

Elmer Gantry was essentially a “Put your trust in JAYSUS and your money in MY POCKET, and you will go to the PROMISED LAND” evangelist who, while not preaching Jesus’ Word, engaged in non-Christian activities like adultery. The following excerpt, which is also characteristic of a Barack Obama campaign rally in which women swoon over Barry’s impressive but meaningless words, sums up Elmer Gantry’s character.

To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring to explain before dozens of popeyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand — fifty thousand — a million a year, and all this by the Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine. …No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything… How agreeable on bright winter afternoons in the gilt and velvet elegance of the lecture hall, to look at smart women and moan, ‘And, oh my beloved, can you not see, do you no perceive, have not your earth-bound eyes ingathered, the supremacy of raja’s quality which each of us, by that inner contemplation which is the all however cloaked by the seeming, can consummate and build loftily to higher aspiring spheres?’

Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry

Obama’s extravagent promises to dispense government benefits meanwhile ties in with Jack Cade’s campaign speech from King Henry VI, Part 2. It is critical to note that Shakespeare wrote lines of this nature for the entertainment of the groundlings, or spectators who had to sit on the ground because they could not afford theater seats (and possibly for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth, who appreciated earthy humor). Jack Cade’s propositions are so unrealistic that even the groundlings recognize them as outrageous frauds, but Obama–who perhaps thinks of his audience as bitter small town Pennsylvanians who cling to guns and religion while not being much brighter than the mules that once helped work the state’s coal mines–expects people to swallow his material whole.

CADE

Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,–

ALL [Imagine women at an Obama rally swooning and fainting]

God save your majesty!

CADE

I thank you, good people: there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord. …And here, sitting upon London-stone, I charge and command that, of the city’s cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign.

Sure, Barry, and if we believe this, there is a bridge in Brooklyn we would like to sell you. Next we come to Albert Gore, who stands in for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner. In medieval times, a pardoner was a charlatan who sold people indulgences, or pardons for their sins. You could even buy pardons for the souls of deceased relatives, so as to reduce their time in Purgatory. (Again, the charlatan did not have to deliver any visible results whatsoever to separate gullable suckers from their money.) With due credit to Geoffrey Chaucer for the original:

Now, good men, Earth forgive you each trespass,
And keep you from the sin of greenhouse gas.
My carbon offsets cure and will suffice,
So that it gains me gold, or silver brings,
Or else, I care not- brooches, spoons or rings.
You must embrace fully Al Gore’s line of bull,
While o’er your eyes we will pull the wool!
An offset certificate I’ll give you, anon,
And into environmental bliss you’ll go, each one.
For I’ll absolve you, by Kyoto’s special power,
You that send me money, as Green this hour
As you were born.
And lo, sirs, thus I preach.
And the United Nations, who is a parasitic leech,
So grant you each his offset to receive;
For that is best; I will not you deceive.
But, sirs, you must swallow my whole tale;
I’ve carbon credits in my pouch that cannot fail,
As good as Kyoto Treaty ever saw, I vow,
The which I got by kindness of Al Gore.
If dollars your change of heart and mind reveal,
You’ll get my absolution while you kneel.
Come forth, and send me your lucre bright,
And quickly I’ll set your consciences aright;
Or else receive a carbon credit as you wend,
All new and fresh as every mile shall end,
So that you offer me each time, anew,
More gold and silver, all good coins and true.
It is an honour to each one that’s here
That you may have a competent pardoner
To give you carbon offsets to you acquit,
For all greenhouse gases you may emit.