We Speak Not of Osama

We Speak Not of Osama

NOTE: Because of an editorial error, last week’s poem was incorrectly printed. This is a corrected version. Our apologies to Calvin Trillin (and to Cole Porter). –The Editors

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(With apologies to Cole Porter, the master, who wrote “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”)

The towers fell. We knew full well
The villain in this awful drama.
His name held sway, till he got away.
Now we speak not of Osama.

We said we’d pound him once he’s found
So flat that he’d cry for his momma.
Forget that jive, that “dead or alive,”
‘Cause we speak not of Osama.

He’s not even in the axis.
No, his evil did not make the grade.
For the thing he mostly lacks is
A country that we can invade.

He could be in Yokohama,
Or Bahrain or Belize or Dubai.
But to get back at Osama
We’ll just pulverize some other guy.

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Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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