Bill Kristol wants you to know that he still hasn't read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," but...

... he "recognize[s] the work’s stature as a significant and influential part of our literary and cultural history."

I'm reading "In a World of Pete Hegseths, Be a Maya Angelou."

I don't know if Kristol knows what he's telling us we need to "be," but he's upset that "pursuant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to purge so-called DEI content from military libraries and classrooms, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was removed, along with 380 other books, from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library."

Kristol asserts, despite not having read the book, that "'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' is not 'DEI content.' It’s a quintessentially American autobiography—a popular and important one. It’s a book a student at the Academy might want to read for his or her education, or for pleasure."

Why would the story of a particular individual represent the promotion of the DEI agenda?

"How qualified do you have to be?"

Said Cory Booker, quoted in "Cory Booker demolishes GOP attempts to smear Ketanji Brown Jackson" by Jennifer Rubin (in WaPo). 

I don't know about "demolishes" — or "smear" for that matter. But I agree with the Booker's implication. The question for the Senate is basic qualification. The President has the appointments power, and the Senate isn't in the position to ask who would it pick, if it had to single out somebody.

Booker ended on a high note, quoting a Maya Angelou poem: “You may try to write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies … but still, like dust, I rise.”

Were there bitter twisted lies about KBJ? All Rubin cites is the charge that she's "'soft' on crime and child pornography." That's a characterization of the facts. It might be overdone, but I don't see the lies. And I don't think a strong stance against crime and child pornography is bitter or twisted. I loathe that sort of hyperbole. 

That's why I like Booker's "How qualified do you have to be?"!

"Question: When will we put Dr. Seuss on the twenty?"

That's a question I wrote in this page of the sketchbook I drew when I was in Paris. (It was some time in the 1990s. I forget when. I blogged this page in 2004, the first year of this blog, after St. Exupéry's plane was found in the Mediterranean Sea, 60 years after he crashed and died.)

I loved that France had put an artist on its money, and I felt a little sad that we Americans don't put our artists first. So I must feel elated that we've done it at last. We've put an artist on our money:

I got my wish, so I'm just going to be happy about an artist on the money, not argue about the particular artist chosen. 

When I wrote in my sketchbook, I picked the name Dr. Seuss not only because he wrote accessible words and drew charming drawings, which is what St. Exupéry did. I picked it because I thought virtually all Americans could get behind the choice of Dr. Seuss. We all know him and have enjoyed his work. Who can't like him? But 18 years have passed, and... is Dr. Seuss cancelled? He's somewhere on the road to cancellation.

So I couldn't get my precise wish.

When you wish upon a Star-Bellied Sneetch/Makes no difference who you reach/Something like your heart desires/Will come to you....

So I got my wish imprecisely. I got Maya Angelou! 

***

Like a songbird, her legs are invisible as she flies, arms outstretched/Darting into the slots of vending machines/Across America.

"Miss Ann (sometimes Miss Anne) was [Karen's] forerunner, coming from Southern Black vernacular of the 19th century — the mistress of the plantation, the boss lady..."

"... (and proto-girlboss), with a mandatory honorific. While she was subordinate to the white man (Mr. Charlie), she still held a higher status in the hierarchy than Black people and exploited this for all she was worth, alternately imperious and dainty, belligerent and helpless, depending on context. The moniker has persisted: The writer Zora Neale Hurston listed it in a glossary appended to her 1942 short fiction 'Story in Harlem Slang,' the memoirist and civil rights activist Maya Angelou deployed it in her poem 'Sepia Fashion Show' in 1969 ('I’d remind them please, look at those knees, / you got at Miss Ann’s scrubbing') and as late as 2016, when CNN exit polls for the presidential election indicated that more than 40 percent of white women had voted for Donald Trump, the journalist Amy Alexander, writing on The Root, explained the results as the 'Miss Ann effect.' But as Carla Kaplan, a professor of American literature, notes in 'Miss Anne in Harlem' (2013), by the time of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, a more subtle white woman had come to earn the name — one who intentionally entered Black spaces at a time when other white people denounced such an act 'as either degeneracy or lunacy.' Some of these women were activists, others mere thrill-seekers or provocateurs, their motives and desires ranging 'from dreadful to honorable,' Kaplan writes, and they were greeted in the Black community with caution."

From "The March of the Karens/The name has come to represent an entitled and belligerent white woman. But what does this narrative say — and elide — about racism and sexism today?" by Ligaya Mishan (NYT).

"If you didn’t know Ms. Anglund’s stories, you probably knew her drawings of children: Their faces were blank orbs with just two wide-set dots for eyes."

"They became ubiquitous, appearing on Hallmark cards, dolls and ceramics, as Anglund merchandise secured a prominent niche in the collectibles market... Ms. Anglund’s illustrations were particularly distinctive. While the adults in her drawings all displayed fully formed and expressive facial features, the children had none at all, save for those dots for eyes. Ms. Anglund, who used her own children as models, said she had never made a conscious decision to omit her young characters’ mouths and noses. But over time, she said, she realized that unformed, untouched faces better evoked the innocence of childhood. 'I think perhaps I am trying to get down to the essence of a child,' she said, 'not drawing just a particular, realistic child, but instead I think I’m trying to capture the "feeling" of all children, of childhood itself, perhaps.'"

 From "Joan Walsh Anglund, 95, Dies; Her Children’s Books Touched Millions/Her first in a prolific career, 'A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You,' was a phenomenon. And her illustrations capturing childhood became a cottage industry" (NYT). 

Anglund wrote the line "A bird doesn’t sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song" — which Maya Angelou, author of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” took to quoting.

"If Dolly Parton were organizing a literary dinner party, which 3 writers — dead or alive — would she invite?"

This answer is amusing because she's so openly declining to answer the question in terms of setting up an excellent conversation:

First would be James Patterson because, since we are both in entertainment, we could write it off as a business expense. (Ha!) Second would be Fannie Flagg — she’s a friend and a very funny author, so I know she would be a guaranteed good time. Third would be Maya Angelou because she would definitely have wonderful stories and spoke and wrote so poetically. As a bonus, I’d ask Charles Dickens to join us — for the street cred. 

That's from a NYT piece with a headline — "Dolly Parton Likes to Read by the Fire in Her Pajamas" — that forces me to crack a Groucho Marx joke — How the fire got in her pajamas, I don't know.

 

Anyway, she names 4, not 3, and Patterson seems only to be there as part of a tax avoidance scheme. Does Dolly Parton ever let her political opinions show? She flaunts her resistance to taxation. That might be conservative. The other thing in that piece that strikes me as conservative is that she expresses — twice — her love of the book "The Little Engine That Could." It's the book she wants all kids to read. I can't imagine a left-leaning person saying that. 

I found this from the Independent: "Dolly Parton’s politics hide in plain sight, whether she admits it or not There’s not much room for ambiguity in our times, as some Hollywood stars have found out, yet Parton’s philanthropy, which includes her funding of a Covid-19 vaccine, means she gets a free pass. But it’s easy to read between the lines." 

I've already read between the lines. A devoted promoter of the "The Little Engine That Could" must be conservative or libertarian. But let's read this:

I see Matt Yglesias is doing a sunrise picture... but it's for politics, not, apparently, for any love of nature.

“I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” pic.twitter.com/tKtzHmJ2gO

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 2, 2020

I've got 2 poetry posts this morning, and I thought Yglesias's quote might be another poem... Maya Angelou, perhaps? But, no, it's Benjamin Franklin:

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin observed that he had often wondered whether the design on the president's chair depicted a rising or a setting sun. "Now at length," he remarked, "I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun."

It's okay to use nature metaphors in politics. Reagan has his "Morning in America." It's nice to see the optimism, even though, I assume, Yglesias's optimism is an expression of the belief that Biden will win. If Trump wins, it will be... I had the transitory glimmer of happiness believing I was looking upon a rising sun, but no, no, it was a setting sun and darkness has fallen upon us once again.

Ah, whatever. Here's the sunrise I saw this morning — witnessed and loved purely as a sunrise and not any sort of metaphor:

Ihan Omar takes to the high ground — the Maya Angelou high ground.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

-Maya Angelou https://t.co/46jcXSXF0B

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019

Very well played by Omar.

Here's the full text of "Still I Rise," which is not to be confused with "On the Pulse of the Morning," the poem — often mocked by Rush Limbaugh — that Angelou performed at Bill Clinton's inauguration, the one that begins with "A Rock, A River, A Tree" and the "dry tokens" (petrified droppings?) of dinosaurs:



From the Wikipedia article, "On the Pulse of the Morning":

The popular press praised Clinton's choice of Angelou as inaugural poet, and her "representiveness" of the American people and its president. Critic Mary Jane Lupton said that "Angelou's ultimate greatness will be attributed" to the poem, and that Angelou's "theatrical" performance of it, using skills she learned as an actor and speaker, marked a return to the African-American oral tradition of speakers such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Poetry critics, despite praising Angelou's recitation and performance, gave mostly negative reviews of the poem....

I think the move to poetry is good! Trump does poetry too. Famously, "The Snake"!



CORRECTION: The original headline for this post was "Ihan Omar takes to the high ground — the Maya-Angelou-at-the-Clinton-inauguration high ground." That lets you see that I myself confused "Still I Rise" with "On the Pulse of the Morning." I'd discovered my mistake as I put the post together, but I forgot to change the post title until after publication. Fixed!

Because now you're having nightmares?

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

A quote from — of all people — Dr. Seuss. That's the third-most-like quote at Goodreads on the topic about which people have registered the most "likes" — love.

I got there this morning because I was having a conversation in which I needed to remember the quote, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

I was surprised to see who the quote was from because I thought it was something that Rush Limbaugh says a lot. But why was I surprised? I blogged about that quote just 4 years ago. It's a quote about remembering and forgetting, and I keep remembering the quote and forgetting who said it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill Peschel said:

Maya Angelou never said it. She didn't even improve upon an existing quote.

It was really said by a Mormon official, Carl W. Buehner, in 1971: "They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel."

There's no evidence Angelou said anything like this.

This commonly happens with quotes. There's even been cases where a phrase as simple as "Elementary, my dear Watson," the seed for which was planted in the original books, improved by William Gillette in his "Sherlock Holmes" play, but the actual direct quote came from, of all people, P.G. Wodehouse in one of his school stories.

In short, never trust quotes from Goodreads or BrainyQuotes.

Bill provides a link to Quote Investigator, which concludes:

In conclusion, based on current evidence QI suggests that Carl W. Buehner can be credited with this adage. Many people have used the saying without ascription in the years after 1971. The attribution to Maya Angelou is unsupported at this time.

GoodReads is a big website. It often comes up first or close to first when I google something (as I did before writing this post). And here's a misattributed quote that ranks #1 for quotes on the #1 topic! Mental note never to trust GoodReads.

I wonder if Dr. Seuss said "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams," which I blogged because I thought it was so dumb (yet ranked so high).

It's dumb for at least 2 reasons, one of which is indicated by my post title: Your real life could be better than your dreams because you are having bad dreams, and it's possible that your lover is giving you nightmares that are worse than what is actually a bad relationship. The other reason is that the insomnia is a problem that diminishes the quality of your life. It's much better to get a good night's sleep and be in good condition to enjoy the next day with your loved one. It's one thing to stay up late (or even all night) because you're having a great time with someone — perhaps having sex for hours while telling each other the story of your life thus far — but that's not a sustainable love. You need your sleep. And who goes to sleep because they're just eager to dream? The motivation to sleep is that you are tired and you care about feeling good the next day!

Okay, now that I know not to trust Goodreads, I'm checking whether Dr. Seuss is responsible for the idiocy the Goodreads crowds liked so much. Ah! According to this discussion at Wikiquote, there's no evidence that this quote came from Dr. Seuss. Seuss innocent. Goodreads guilty.

The Post Office screws up its effort to honor Maya Angelou with a stamp.

They've put her smiling face next to a quote — "A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" — that she didn't write.



As WaPo reports, the quote appeared in a 1967 children's book by Joan Walsh Anglund called "A Cup of Sun." Anglund — who is 89 — says it's her original quote (except that her "he" has been changed to "it").

A Postal Service spokesman, Mark Saunders, initially said he had never heard of the Anglund quote until The Washington Post informed him of it. In response, he sent a link to a 2013 blog post interview that quoted Angelou saying the phrase. In a later statement, he also said “numerous references” attributed the the quote to her as well.

“The Postal Service used her widely recognized quote to help build an immediate connection between her image and her 1969 nationally recognized autobiography, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ ” the statement said.

So, the Postal Service's answer is don't blame us, blame Angelou, who is not alive to say she never said she wasn't quoting somebody else.

Anglund is handling the spotlight well:

"It’s an interesting connection, and interesting it would happen and already be printed and on her stamp,” Anglund said. “I love her and all she’s done, and I also love my own private thinking that also comes to the public because it comes from what I’ve been thinking and how I’ve been feeling."

Bash the Post Office, say what you will about Angelou, but consider rewarding Anglund by buying her little book, "A Cup of Sun."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read My Beloved World.

In a piece titled "Royalties and Teaching Help Fill Bank Accounts of Justices," the NYT reports:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not report any book earnings in 2013, though she received nearly $2 million in advances in 2012 for her memoir. Sales may not have exceeded the advances.

Oh, really?

How many copies of the book "My Beloved World" would need to be sold to cover a $2 million advance?

Is it ridiculous to think that such a book would sell that much? Maybe not. Look: It sits atop Amazon's "Best Sellers in Hispanic & Latino Biographies" list. Doesn't it fit the agenda of public schools that have been assigning "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" all these years?

I'm thinking about "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," not because of the recent death of the author, Maya Angelou, but because there was a post up at Andrew Sullivan's place yesterday titled "Do Critics Really Matter?," which quotes a Evgenia Peretz Vanity Fair piece about Donna Tartt's book "The Goldfinch":

Maya Angelou, the poet who puzzlingly punctuated Bill Clinton's first auguration with references to dried dinosaur and mastodon shit...

... has passed. She was 86.

Here's the full text of the poem, "On the Pulse of Morning,"" which begins: "A Rock, A River, A Tree/Hosts to species long since departed/Marked the mastodon/The dinosaur, who left dried tokens/Of their sojourn here/On our planet floor...." What that meant about Bill Clinton, we are left to interpret.

ADDED: I loved "I Know Why the Caged Bird Laughs."

AND: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

$700,000 to $800,000 spent to erase a quote that was displayed out of context.

Martin Luther King said "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness," which we will remember, even through it's now off the memorial. It's off the memorial because, in the "drum major" speech, there were some other words around it — as is always the case with snappy lines in speeches — and Maya Angelou and others felt some shades of subtlety were lost, making the man sound arrogant. Deeper grooves will be carved all over the memorial to disguise the wordlessness where there were once words, words that are etched more deeply into our memory as we read this news story and see, once again, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

Ironically, the news story doesn't include the context. So I'll tell you the context: The context is abysmal phony outrage, toadying obeisance to Angelou, and an atrocious waste of money.

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Laughs" — the Maya Angelou prank show.

I dvr "Saturday Night Live," but I rarely watch any of it. But we got sucked into this week's show, with Maya Rudolph hosting, and that Maya Angelou imitation cracked me up.

The second link goes to the whole show, which includes Rudolph playing Michelle Obama in a "Cosby Show" spoof in which Fred Amisen has to play a merged Barack/Cosby character. Rudolph also plays Beyonce (with her new baby) in a scene that I didn't watch but heard Meade laughing at, and there was a very noisy segment called "What's Up With That?" about an incredibly irritating TV show. The real Bill O'Reilly appeared as himself in that sketch, and Meade seemed to find it hilarious, as I — 10 feet away from the TV — was trying to get through some work that I'd been putting off all weekend.

What made the show so funny? Has "SNL" gotten good again for some reason? Is Maya Rudolph a genius? Was it race? I see Ace of Spades is saying:

SNL Does Oddly Racial Episode for Black History Month

One sketch knocks the hypocrisy of sportscasters for making jokes about Jeremy Lin's race while getting all pissy about similar jokes aimed at blacks, and another sketch asks what it would take for Obama to lose the black vote.

Plus goofing on Maya Angelou.

Regarding that first sketch: I agree on the hypocrisy but I think the solution here is for everyone to lighten up, not for everyone to submit further to PC.

Saturday Night Live knows well that racial jokes are funny -- since they use them themselves a lot. Oh, they don't do it in a mean way, and they often (as here) have some kind of defensible thesis they can point to, but still. If you're using them, you're not really against them.

Isn't this the problem that drove Dave Chapelle crazy? I know Ace is trying to turn the tables on liberals. I think part of what's going on is that if there's a subject that you're not supposed to laugh about, when someone steps up and cracks jokes about it, it's especially funny. And part of why it worked is, I think, that there were some really great black actors playing, not racial stereotypes, but specific black individuals: Beyonce, Prince, Maya Angelou, Cornel West, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Obama. Specificity, not stereotypes.

Meanwhile, and speaking of Jeremy Lin, here's the NYT not-so-subtly accusing the American people of racism for getting so excited this year about Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow, when we haven't gotten comparably excited about a black athlete.