The Cowardly Also-Ran Watch

Dear Dr. Bones,

To celebrate Friday the 13th, perhaps, the Squire of Simon Pajama has graciously deigned to vouchsafe us harmless drudges of Beautiful Letters a little more fodder for our deplorably skimpy dossier on the YaleoDra™a product, which is, as everybooby cultivated knows, his freelordship’s great claim to neofame. We learn, I think, that coolth (as it used to be cool to call it back when Hector had a pulpit) is a key value for YD™ aficiandos. So make a memorandumb of this one, please, sir, and append a note to it reminding Paddy and Eye to work back through all the other papers some rainy day soon in quest of the quality in question.

Meanwhile, the scribble before us could easily be taken to imply only that the goodvolks at Neohaven CT, and/or Pajama Junction NJ, dialectically pronounce ‘coolth’ to rhyme with ‘youth’. But ¡Surely there is more to it than that!

And so there is, kinda. His freelordship announces that Lieberals and Demoncrats were not *really* cool even when they were young. Bein’ a pervert himself, I daresay the Squire must know all about it from the inside when he barks censoriously against "cowardly also-rans of the sixties and seventies ... who stood by and watched ..., too cautious to join in but admiring (to some degree at least) [the in-joiners]." Nobooby can reasonably complain, of course, that his freelordship is not a gung-ho in-joiner nowadays, whatever may have been his case before scramblin’ up the lofty heights of Middle Age.

I digress, alas, from the strictly literary-critical path. The ad homunculum should be no concern of ours, at least not in and for itself. Imagine the Muses and yourself and Paddy and Eye standing up on that mountaintop with Caspar David Friedrich as he painted the back of the Unknown Citizen, who is looking out allegorically over vast and partially cloud-shrouded Vistas of Coolth. Vistas of somethin’ wunnerful, at any rate, for that ‘allegorically’ is how the picture people take the picture without exception known to me.

Let us think of Roger, zeroth Freelord of Simon Pajama in the neopeerage--an’ ¡World’s Premier YaleDrama™ist!--, as bein’ that well-frockcoated citizen, and conduct ourselves accordingly, please. Should you decide that you have probable cause to suspect that the Man with the Back is wearing a Groucho Marx fake moustache and Lizzie Warren eyeglasses, kindly keep it to yourself until we climb down home. Or at least climb down out of earshot. The Unknown Citizen does not, after all, block so much of your own view, sir, as to make it worth your while to pull a zimmermann about it. [1]

I fear that las note went on so long that I am getting weary. So let me hasten whight to the bottom line, namely ¿Do you suppose the Squire secretly relishes the funny side of appealin’ to pajamaclad kiddiecons reclined obesely upon their potatoe couches with all his stirrin’ viennasauasage about heroic joiners-in as opposed to "the cowardly also-rans of" our own Age of Breitbartius here an’ now? ¡De Narcisso Dextro fabula narratur!

Eye would guess his freelordship is 1000% serious, an’ has no more sense of how he looks from outside the money house than ... well, than a literal monkey would.

But I’d be pleased to rumble with you if you disagree.

Happy days.

___
[1] Rio Limbaugh’s héros du jour is worth considering in conjunction with YaleDrama™ic notions of coolth. ¡A gung-ho joiner-in is their George, that’s for sure!

Neohaven is not simply identical with Rio Limbaugh, though, most of the time, so Eye inclines to doubt that Party Neocomrade (ninth grade) G. M. Zimmerman can be transferred from real life to the YaleoDrama™ic stage on anything like an "as is" basis. Unless Eye have misread the Squire altogether, his freelordship is not likely to think the whole stand-one’s-ground juridical fandangoe edifyin’. Florida requires that her heroes believe themselves to stand in imminent peril of a forced passin’, or at least of severe body damage, before they may shoot first. On the pre-Yaleo stage, at any rate, that rule would depreciate entertainment values seriously. The Macbeth couple, for instance, or Signore Othello, would not have been able to get started on those terms.

Or consult his freelordship’s own secret-sector lexicon of coolth an’ courage: "often horrifically violent, individuals[, who a]t least ... did something ... [like] drop acid." Perhaps you will disagree, Dr. Bones, but Eye can only think that his freelordship wants a Real Hero to be far more unilateral and preëmptive than PNC-9 G. M. Zimmerman is alleged to have been. Even the late Master Shakespeare could not have made it very plausible that Iago (or whatever villain you prefer from the Bardic corpus) carried a flask of vitriol with him everywhere he went, in case he suddenly had to stand his ground by throwing it in the face of his assailant.

I am not 100% sure that the Squire did not original-intent "drop acid" to signify iingestion of lysergic acid diethylamide rather than vitriol-hurlin’. ’Twould be a critical shame if such a comparative tameness as that were a sample of the personal freelordly, let alone the general YaleoDrama™ic, conception of "horrific violence." I certain old-fashioned brand of moralizer would find an LSD habit ‘horrific’ enough, but even she would have trouble making out any sort of case for ‘violent’.

But Bradley knows best about pre-Yaleo stage villains.