A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme

by Calvin Trillin

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"Somehow, despite everything Calvin Trillin wrote about the Bush Administration in Obliviously On He Sails, his 2004 bestseller in verse, George W. Bush is still in the White House. Taking a philosophical view, Trillin has said, "We weren't going to know whether you could bring down a presidency with iambic pentameter until somebody tried it." Now Trillin is trying again, back at his pithy and hilarious best to comment on the President's decision to go to war in Iraq ("Then terrorists could show more count on what we'd do: / Attack us, we'll strike back, though not at you"), his religiosity ("He treats his critics in the press / As if they're yapping Pekineses. / Reporters deal in mundane facts; / This man has got the word from Jesus"), and whether he was wearing a transmitting device in the first presidential debate ("Could this explain his odd expressions? Is there proof he / Was being told, 'If you can hear me now, look goofy'?") Trillin deals with the people around Bush, such as Nanny Dick Cheney and Mushroom Cloud Rice and Orange John Ashcroft and Orange John's successor, Alberto Gonzales ("The A.G.'s to be one Alberto Gonzales- / Dependable, actually loyal uber alles"). He tries to predict the behavior of the famously intemperate John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in poems with titles like "Bolton Chases French Ambassador Up Tree" and "White House Says Bolton Can Do Job Even While in Straitjacket." Finally, in dealing with whether the entire Bush Administration, like the unfortunate Brownie, has done a heckuva job, he composes a small-government sea chantey for the Republicans: 'Cause government's the problem, lads, Americans would all do well to shun it. Yes, government's the problem, lads. At least it is when we're the ones who run it."--Publisher's website. The humorist and author offers a new collection of irreverent verses that takes aim at the Bush administration. show less

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40+ Works 6,617 Members
Calvin Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University and graduated in 1957; he later served as a Fellow of the University. He was born on December 5, 1935. He worked as a reporter for Time magazine before joining the staff of The New Yorker in 1963. His reporting for The New Yorker on the racial integration of the show more University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia. Family, travel and food are also themes in Trillin's work. Three of his books American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; and Third Helpings; were individually published and are also collected in the 1994 compendium The Tummy Trilogy. He has also written a collection of short stories Barnett Frummer Is An Unbloomed Flower (1969) and three comic novels, Runestruck (1977), Floater (1980), and Tepper Isn't Going Out (2001). Among his recent work, is Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor for Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff, in 2012. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Genres
Poetry, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
811.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican poetry20th Century1945-1999
LCC
PS3570 .R5 .H43Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1961-
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