There Ain't No Mo' Eskimos
Posted: November 25th, 2006, 11:27 am
There Ain't No Mo' Eskimos
for release 11-25-06
Washington DC
There ain't no mo' Eskimos. I'll bet you couldn't find an igloo in Alaska these days. All the Inuits live in double-wides and have satellite TV.
There ain't no mo' cowboys. They do rope tricks in shopping malls now or wear 800 dollar hats and live in Nashville and sing warmed-over sixties rock and call it country because they are wearing patent leather boots.
And there ain't no mo' Hell's Angels.
I seem to remember when a biker was a kid who couldn't afford a car. Motorcycles were dangerous, romantic, masculine and affordable transportation. But that was another time and another place.
Today, if you take a drive on a fair Sunday afternoon on the W. Virginia side of DC, you might see a modern bike club riding through the Shenandoah Valley. But you won't see Marlon Brando leading a gang of oily misfit renegades with their hair flapping in the wind, high on drugs and youth and desperation and wildness. No, you will see perfectly coiffed and helmeted gray-beards wearing boutique leathers that probably cost more than James Dean's motorcycle. They are riding custom Harleys for which they paid as much as they did for the Mercedes that is sitting in their two-car garage in Georgetown. These week-end warriors all have jobs working for the government or for somebody who is contracting with the government. They are hardly the outlaws who beat the crowd at Altamont with cue sticks.
And there ain't no mo' two-by-fours.
My only claim to being a deconstructionist is that I once dismantled an old house that was framed in two-by-fours. The two-by-fours measured two inches by four inches, that's why they call them two-by-fours. But things tend to shrink in our modern world--telephones are smaller and Almond Joys and two-by-fours only measure one-and-a-half by three-and-a-half inches. Why do they still call them two-by-fours?
And there ain't no mo' statesmen.
We only have politicians now and even politics has degenerated into show business. Being telegenic is far more important than representing solid ideas and policies. Why are political pundits and commentators sounding like sportscasters? It's because politics has become a sport even tawdrier than pro wrestling.
I suppose that American politics has been a sport since about the time of Andy Jackson, but in our contemporary age of faux everything, we have managed to squeeze every last drop of statesmanship out of the political occupation and we are rendering it for what it is--a professional sport and a beauty contest. Our leaders are having trouble distinguishing Public Policy from Public Relations.
The Poet's Eye is looking out for things that disappear.
There ain't no mo' leaded gas
There ain't no mo' season pass
There ain't no mo' Eskimos
There ain't no mo' two-by-fo's
There ain't no mo' adding machines
There ain't no mo' Dodo birds
There ain't no mo' plain blue jeans
There ain't no mo' dinosaurs
There ain't no mo' telephone booths
There ain't no mo' absolute truths
There ain't no mo' smokin' inside
There ain't no mo' virgin brides
There ain't no mo' oleo
There ain't no mo' polio
There ain't no mo' chicken pox
There ain't no mo' bobby sox
There ain't no mo' silent movies
There ain't no mo' cools and groovies
There ain't no mo' vaudeville show
There ain't no mo' buffalo
Things they just come and go
but
when there ain't no mo'
There ain't no mo'
--Lightning Rod