Sunday Pages: "Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgment of Paris'"
A poem by Robert Browning
Dear Reader,
While my man Moscow Never Sleeps has done yeoman’s work, it’s been strange for me not to write this week—or, rather, not to publish. I’m hard at work on a series of pieces about a certain Miller High Life enthusiast on the Supreme Court, with help from my friend Lincoln’s Bible, and will drop those when they are all finished, probably later this month.
Are you feeling better about Trump leaving office on January 20 (if not sooner), I hope? Twitter was all a-buzz last night with outraged commentary about his stupid rally in Valdosta, but come on, guys! Why are we still breathlessly reporting on insane crap he says like it’s Gospel? He’s done. It’s over—even Kellyanne Covid says so. The coup ain’t happening (as I’ve been saying for months now). He’s only doing this to raise money and nourish his battered ego, so the best thing we can do is “gray rock” the guy and change the channel. The Queen’s Gambit is really good, and in its rich, chess-based universe, the janitor has 60 IQ points on Trump, and the Sicilian Defense has nothing to do with mobsters.
On a call with some old friends on Wednesday, I found myself laughing uncontrollably at the thought of MAGA die-hards refusing to vote on “rigged Chinese machines” in Georgia’s special election. They cautioned that it may just be a lib’rul Twitter fantasy sprung to life, but all it takes is a few thousand of these nose-cutters to spite the face of the GOP in the Senate, possibly for a generation. And we know there are ample fools in Georgia, because Trump took his Superspreader Tour to the Peach State, directly endangering the lives of thousands of potential Loeffler/Perdue voters while reminding them to get to the polls on “June 5th.” Go, Kraken, go!
This week’s “Sunday Pages” is, I hope, a respite from all the madness. It is a poem—one of the shortest ever published—by Robert Browning. The eponymous painting is likely by Rubens, and looks like this:
Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of "‘The Judgment of Paris’"
He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.
The poem describes how I feel every time I see a Trump supporter.
He is finished. And when Ivanka thinks she will be governor of Florida, remember her playing diplomat being shunned in Europe too. The trumps are done, the polluters and Federalist society are not - but those scammers have played their hand.