What Would Rudyard Kipling Have To Say About Maya Angelou?

June3rd MMXIV

Well, he would probably be a little embarrassed (nay, depressed) that a "poetess" with a 4th-grade the Presidential Medal of Freedom).
vocabulary and an opus based entirely 100% on racial grievance would be awarded (in 2011, by B.O.) the highest civilian presidential honor in the United States (

Maya's "Still I Rise" ("like dust") (wuh?) has the literary depth of the microwave heating instructions on the side of a Pop Tarts box :



And yet and yet: presidents and despots alike have pumped the handle of the hydraulic lift that ascended Maya to her lofty perch on a Willy Wonka-like pedestal.

A teary-eyed B.O. even admitted that his own mother, Stanley, was so inspired by M.A. that she named Obama's Indonesian half-sister (Maya Sotero) after her.

Only Allah can guess the inspiration behind Barack and Michelle naming their daughters "Sashia" and "Malia."

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Rudyard Kipling, Hesketh Pritchard, August Andrée... would these great men and so many like them ever flourish in the upside-down world we are living in now? Where denial replaces reality, and reverse-discrimination stands in for compassion?

Answer: their agents just tweeted back that the three were unavailable for comment right now, as they attending mandatory Diversity Training.

 *sigh*

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We are not trying to be mean by criticizing Angelou's (childlike) prose ; rather, we are pointing out the screaming hypocrisy of a system that pretends to believe that Angelou's work is on the same plain as Shakespeare,  Keats. or Dylan Thomas. A system that begrudgingly admits the existence of hierarchy in Nature, but never in Society.

For purposes of comparison, check out Kipling's "If", as recited by the great Michael Caine :


 

The New York Times: Though Not Really Relevant To This Post, Verminous And Treasonous Since
 1898.