MemDay wknd

5-26-09—When [Derek] Walcott quit the race, commentators in British newspapers noted the irony of hounding a distinguished literary figure on the basis of long-ago sexual transgressions when many of Britain’s greatest poets were social or political reprobates, by the standards of modern day Britain. Michael Deacon in The Telegraph cited Lord Byron (“womanizer”), Samuel Coleridge (“drug fiend”), John Keats (“smack head”), Rudyard Kipling (“imperialist”), T.S. Eliot (“lines that could be construed as racist”), and Dylan Thomas (“drank like a drain, begged and stole from friends”), among others, and concluded “Not one of them, were they alive today, could hope to land the Oxford post—they just don’t meet the exacting moral standards set by people who conduct smear campaigns.” NYT A5

--5-24-09--The demise of an economy as mighty as that of the United States as of 2000 cannot be accounted for by anything less than deeply mistaken and foolish decision-making within that nation’s ruling circles. “The Decline and Fall of the United States of America,” Beijing University Department of Western Hemisphere History (Beijing Press, 2089)[sic] NYT WK7