The Incompleat Pogo: Walt Kelly

"Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent."

I've just dug up my childhood copy of The Incompleat Pogo by Walt Kelly from a box in storage. It's faded and dog-eared, but otherwise perfectly readable considering it's from 1954. According to my mum, it belonged to one of my uncles, but when I opened the cover it read:

DAVID
JOHNKOOtni
KOFF

I must have scrawled that in pencil when I was 5 or 6 years old. I had pretty good taste for one of "nature's little screechers," as Kelly would say.

Kelly worked with Disney for a while before going rogue and launching his Pogo comic strip in The New York Star in 1948. Pogo is a possum living in Okefenokee Swamp with all his critter friends communicating in a peculiar dialect known as "swamp-speak." Kelly was a master of language, a born humourist and a brilliant satirist. He's been compared to everyone from Lewis Carroll and James Joyce to Aesop. Not one to shy away from politics, Kelly would say he was against "the extreme Right, the extreme Left, and the extreme Middle." He poked fun at the Ku Klux Klan (The Kluck Klams):

And also lampooned Senator Joseph McCarthy (Simple J. Malarkey) at a time when he wielded enough power to ruin careers:

Here's a song Kelly wrote and sang called, "Go Go Pogo":

Go Go Pogo

As Maine go o so Pogo go Key Largo,
Otsego to Frisco go to Fargo,
Okeefenokee playin', possum on a Pogo,
Stick around and see the show

Go over Land alive a band o' jive will blow go Pogo,
I go you go who go to go pollyvoo go,
From Caravan Diego, Waco and Oswego,
Tweedle de he go she go we go me go Pogo.

Atascadero, Wheeler, Barrow, Someplace in Mexico,
Delaware, Ohio and you don't need the text to go.
Wheeling, West Virginia, With everything that's in ya,
Down the line you'll see the shine from Oregon to Caroline.

Oh, eenie Meenie Minie Kokomo go Pogo
Tishimingo, sing those lingo, whistling go.
Shamokin to Hoboken,
Chenango to Chicongo,
it's golly, I go goo goo going go go Pogo.

Glenn Greenwald: The Enemy Is Us

One of the most astute and consistent writers on U.S. politics is Salon's Glenn Greenwald. He always brings a fresh perspective and an informed legal analysis to the issues of the day. Since Obama was elected, Greenwald has revealed how his administration has maintained Bush & Cheney's extensive executive powers while continuing their assault on the American constitution. Now Obama is targeting U.S. citizens in a way Bush/Cheney never would have dared. We all could use more people like Greenwald, vigilant and articulate defenders of civil society. Here's a snippet from one of his most recent articles:

"What's most amazing about all of this is that even 9 years after the 9/11 attacks and even after the radical reduction of basic rights during the Bush/Cheney years, the reaction is still exactly the same to every Terrorist attack, whether a success or failure, large- or small-scale. Apparently, 8 years of the Bush assault on basic liberties was insufficient...Apparently, as "extremist" as the Bush administration was, there are still new rights to erode each time the word Terrorism is uttered. Each new incident, no matter how minor, prompts new, exotic proposals which the "Constitution-shredding" Bush/Cheney team neglected to pursue: an assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens, formal codification of Miranda dilutions, citizenship-stripping laws, a statute to deny all legal rights to Americans arrested on U.S. soil."

How pathetic is this? Rather than defend the principles he stood up for during the Bush years, Obama has caved into a never-ending demand for "security at any cost." The bullying of FOX & their cohorts is dictating policy and the Obama administration doesn't have the guts to kick back. A case in point was watching Attorney General Eric Holder today tie himself up in knots trying to avoid the term "radical Islam." Why not just say it's un-American to disparage any religion? Or at least reframe the question to include the Taliban?



That he didn't and appeared unable to do so speaks volumes about the Obama administration's inability to defend the core values of its own constitution. Pogo had it right: "The enemy is us."