Dear Dr. Bones,
Friday being accounted a neosabbath amongst the Abraheemics, or EMM Folk, Eastern Mediterranean Monotheists, let us honour it a little for a change and lay off their politics and even off their Pharoahsee self-religionatin’. We shall lay on some kulchur and lit. crit. instead, OK?
Neocomrade (Fifth Class) R. X. Owens comes in handily for my e-picnic plans, because, as you can quickly verify for yourself, his scribble of 1,104 words contains not more than the odd four words of politics and/or religionism. Exactly what the other eleven hundred words may be is more than a little mysterious, but that is a mystery eminently suitable for investigation by us Geisteswissenschaftler, is it not?
And just to provide a jumpinng-off point, like, let me propose that what sits there and sogs in front of our keyboards is a specimen of yaleodrama.[1]
As every wombschoolboy ought to know by now, Neocomrade R. L. Simon, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Padschaama in the peerage of Wingnut City, is the world’s foremost yaleodramatist. Furthermore, His Freelordship may well sign the paychecks of hired hand NC5 RXO -- signin’ ’em naturally on behalf of whoever does the real heavy liftin’ around these e-parts, AstroTurf™wise, for one can hardly suppose that the Kiddiemaster pays for all these splendours of redarkenment out of His Freelordship’s own private- or secret-sector means.
(...) What’s that, sir? (...)
No, I think you are just wrong. The kind of nanoœconomics I have been touching upon, sir, very definitely does fall within the remit of literary criticism. But perhaps I should have made clear that I am not interested in working through one particular junior birdnut’s scribble with a red pencil, but only in using the scribble as a sort of trampoline upon which to bounce a discussion of yaleodrama quâ _genre_. Look, Dr. Bones, if you were to tell the learnèd historians and evaluators of Italian opera that they must not discuss how the expenses of it were met, they would write you off as an obvious Philistine operating in overcorrection mode.
Closer to home, don’t you think even Stephen von Greenblatt of H*rv*rd would deign to write about (hypothetical) documents that prove Lord Verulam, though never writing any drama himself, put the man Shakescreen up to it, and made lots of kibitzing suggestions, and, above all, enclosed banker’s draughts for exactly £28/12/6 in letters dated in seventeen different months scattered between October 1597 and January 1612? Such mammonical background considerations could be of critical interest in the narrowest sense. If nothing else, they would let poor Herr von Greenblatt off the hook a little by not requiring that he defend the incomparable and ever-immortal lustre of absolutely every three words running that his client ever ‘penned’.[2]
I rest that case.
Back at Rancho Pajama, I was about to make the point that yaleodrama resembles opera and melodrama and farce (&c.) in requiring far more than a bare script or scenario. In addition to strictly literary values, there are so-called "production values," and this is where Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama interacts æsthetically as well as financially and sentimentally/‘ideologically’ with the likes of NC-5 R. X. Owens.
Now the Muses and you and I, sir, who must view our yaleodramas not merely from cheap seats, but from folding chairs placed well outside the monkey house, would be rash indeed to suppose we can always distinguish what was original-intented in a yaleodrama by Kiddiemaster Padschaama or other Titan of Neogenius and what was stuck in by some mere producer or director or maybe an even merer stagehand. The latter class of critters have often been known to "play to the crowd," as they say. And of course when the crowd played to happens to be the base and vile of the Party of Grant and ... an’ Atwater ’n’ . . . !
Pardon my politics, sir. The critical problem is not the nature of those pandered to, but whether the panderin’ was in the yaleodramaturge’s Urtext, or stuck in subsequently by some lesser production-valuer.
I have already given away that I believe somebody is panderin’ in the scribble at hand. As almost always around here, Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla are only too clearly expected to feel even better about their neoselves after such a performance than before. [3] In a general way, it is impossible to suppose that Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama does not original-intent that this be so.
This makes His Freelordship doubly vulnerable to inferiors tamperin’ with His yaleodramas: in addition to panderin’ to the kiddies, a Neocomrade R. X. Owens can "get the hang" of some freelordly and kiddiemagisterial script, and then hold the pedal down, so to speak, while performin’ from it so that Wally an’ Cindy "cannot possibly miss" what His Freelordship so very "obviously had in mind." Unfortunately, even when a NC5 RXO mechanism guesses 100% correctly what was original-intented by its betters substantially, the fact remains that the pedalissimo effect was not. The unsolicited overemphasis need not necessarily wreck the yaleodrama as conceived in the mind of the Neotitan, but it certainly might.
That would be a misfortune at and for Rio Limbaugh and Port Ste. Lucie, naturally. Our own misfortune, as critics of yaleodrama and, to some extent, as students of neocomradology, is essentially that there is no way for us to tell exactly what is goin’ on inside the monkey house. With the late Bill Shakescreen, we possess folios and quartos and whatnot that will have had at least a little to do with what happened on stage during Hamlet. But when a NC5 RXO puts on a neoshow based on talkin’ points provided by Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama, one can only guess what even a bad quarto would look like.
Worse yet, the Kiddie Selfservative Movement (KSM) bein’ what it is, pretty well everything that happens on stage over there in the lunatic asylum is bound to look like overexaggerated panderin’ to a decent political grown-up who must watch the neoproceedin’s through a figurative chain-link fence.
A very few scribblers of Party-an’-Ideology operettas and farces and melodramas and yaleodramas do insist so ferociously on
Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you trippingly on the Tongue: But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, I had as liue the Town-Cryer had spoke my Lines: Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie Torrent, Tempest, and (as I say) the Whirle-winde of Passion, you must acquire and beget a Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse. O it offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings: who (for the most part) are capeable of nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes, & noise: I could haue such a Fellow whipt for o’re-doing Termagant: it outHerod’s Herod. Pray you auoid it.
that their wishes get complied with. But when this happens, Dr. Bones, we do not detect the event through any critical acumen of our own, but rather by half the KSM groundlin’s booin’ and hisssssin’ and barkin’ "R.I.N.O.!" at whatever poor Neocomrade Half N. Half they blame for so disgraceful and wimplike an exhibition.[4]
***
I suppose I should say at least a little bit about the particular neospecimen, as opposed to its genre.
Most striking is that it appears to aim at a subtle effect that most of the sweet puppies of Redarkenment are not, perhaps, likely to appreciate. Is not Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschama here invitin’ the PJM dupes and marks to complain that -- of all neothings! -- their enemies for once, and not themselves as always, do not get enough quality time on the Y@@ T@@B?
Only plainly self-discrediting persons named on Rupert’s List [5] are solicited to apply, no doubt. Even on those terms and conditions, however, can Master Wally and Miss Cindy be counted on to shift their gaze away from their own omphaluses long enough to notice? [6]
Finally, as with anything the present coarse and illiterate keyboard may say about media criticism and "production values" and so on, the bottom line, written or implicit, must read as follows:
¡But [Marshall] MacL@@han knows best!
___
[1] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / The ‘E’ in ‘yaleodrama’ is silent. Pronounce the word in four syllables with the first stressed, as if it were the name of an Hibernian of distinction, say 'the late lamented YAEL O’Drama of Poormouth in County Dongbat.' / As ever, / JHM"
[2] I assume, possibly rashly, that Mr. Von Greenblatt of H*rv*rd is human enough to have a few private reservations about the merits of this and that and the other barded by the Bard. Even if he is not, some lesser light from the Other Place, like Prof. Dr. Harold Bloom, would be pleased as Punch to rush in and pick the bad bits of Bacon out of the porridge.
[3] In practice, the needle on the selfwunnerfulometer of most kiddie selfservatives must have been jammed at the high end for years, since Impeachmentgate ’98 if not before. Still, I suppose it might drop back at little without constant pressure. Father Zeus knows best.
[4] I believe I am warranted in taking for granted that P&I wind-up mechanisms with serial numbers like NC5RXO never muck about with production values in such fashion as to render what was original-intented LESS pandersome and loud-pedalled than the talkin’ points furnished them specified. To be sure, since the talkin’ points and yaleodrama scenarios are inaccessible to us, we can never claim to know this beyond all possibility of being mistaken.
Nevertheless, I, at least, cannot imagine how a neocritter with traits like that could long survive, let alone flourish, in any œcological niche in all of Foxcuckooland from sea to whinin’ sea. But perhaps you can think of a for-instance, sir?
[5] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / ‘Rupert's List’ is the (feigned or existin’) consolidation of ALL the enemies cherished by ANY wingnutette or wingnut. / As ever, / JHM"
[6] This is a real question, Dr. Bones, not a rhetorical one. If you have any inkling of an answer to it, please let me hear from you about it.
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