Most Awkward Moment of TV...Ever!
I guess the only thing that makes this video OK is that I guess it was consensual. Call me uncultured but sometimes a man reading a poem to another man that isn't the "Charge of the Light Brigade" or "Casey at the Bat" seems a little...well...funny. And what makes this extra icky is how clearly moved Harry Smith is by this awful and ridiculous poem by Al Gore.
I needed to take a shower after watching this. And not a regular one but a Karen Silkwood haz-mat-team power shower. And yet I still can't get all the ick off me. I fear the ick is now in me. And I will be forever tainted.
HT Viral Footage
9 comments:
1. The painter Arnold Friberg said wisely that if it must be explained it's not art.
2. I teach my students meter. "Free verse" isn't verse.
3. A 16-year-old schoolgirl writes better verse than this drivel.
I apologize for my technological incompetence; I meant to sign my name to the above.
Thanks,
Mack Hall
Are you sure this was on CBS and not Bravo?
I can't believe this man was almost elected President.
His poetry is just as bad as his science.
Haha the interviewer didn't seem to know quite how to respond to that...
"Kindling his place in the forest for the lightning celebration" was a personal favorite line.
Maybe next he can write "The Charge of the Compact Flourescent Lightbulb Brigade."
haha, Anon at 11:25.
Seriously, I agree with Mack-- I learned waaaay too much about poetry in high school to think any of this crap counts. People think it's a poem because it's not detailed or you use flowery language and non-standard punctuation... In short, break out a thesaurus and have a little fun formatting and POOF! you're a poet.
But that's not it! Frost wrote Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening in iambic tetrameter. Blank verse is iambic pentameter. And if I had to freaking learn dactyllic hexameter in 11th grade Latin class, Al Gore ought to know better. Let me paint you a picture, Mr. Veep-- it'll look something like you NOT being a poet.
These celebs have no shame, what they won't do for the almighty dollar. Con men in suits.
Partisan politics aside, this really isn't that bad. You're making too much of it. Granted, it's no great piece of literature, but there's nothing "uncomfortable" about it. The worst is not Al Gore's reading, but Harry Smith's affected appreciation.
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