Ann K. Brady

American Literature 2231

Parody Project

Elite Criticism of the 99%

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and

you're not rich, blame yourself!" Cain said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal

last Wednesday. "It's not a person's fault because they succeeded; it is a person's

fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and

what is it that they're looking for."

-Amy Bingham, ABC News Blogs, quoting Herman Cain

      Is it true that the poor and middle class have only themselves to blame for not ascending to the lofty heights inhabited by our fair pizza king turned presidential wannabe? Is it because, as that most astute and fair-minded critic contends, they are lazy failures that so many people are out of work or are struggling just to get by? When I read such vile, vicious criticism as the above, I say to myself, Mr. Cain is a spoiled brat who is unhappy because his wealth has bought him neither empathy nor courtesy. He has spent his life reaping the benefits of other peoples' labors, and now, when the wretched masses ask for a piece of the pie--the pizza pie--he recoils like a grouchy toddler and refuses to share so much as a bit of crust! Perhaps the poor politician is upset with the protesters because his day has been overwhelmed by difficulties peculiar to his elite status. I think of him awaking in a gilded penthouse and faced with the indignity of calling a rude plumber to fix a clogged toilet. And this, on the day his butler had the gall to call out sick! What is next? How these protesters must irk a man of means whose lofty status should isolate him from their petulant cries. I think I see him bellowing his disdain in a fit of pique--of well-fed, male pique--in his spacious and sumptuous apartments. Why, probably the very plumber on whom our puckered millionaire waits is bumming about in Zuccotti Park waving a sign instead of attending to the needs of his betters! I see our critic stuffed with filet mignon paid for by the pizza empire he built now forced to converse with a valet parker who used to work at Godfathers! Perhaps (poor man!), his attentions have been refused by yet another pretty female employee who now has the brass to publicly lambast him for his compliments (creepy old garlic-breath)! Or maybe he has indigestion from overindulging while looking upon the looming sea of rag-tag humanity calling themselves the 99%. And now, poor fellow, he has been bullied out of the presidential race by his own ill-begotten mistakes without even a thank you from the protesters who should be voting for him.

     But seriously, we have had quite enough of the richest among us blaming the poor for the country's economic collapse! How to re-invent capitalism is not an issue that I intend to discuss; but the fact that so many of our fellow citizens feel the need to sleep in the streets in public protest is a matter of history, and suggests are in good odor with the American public. Granted that the poor have not succeeded as well as their critic--is such vitriolic, mean-spirited venom the way to encourage and improve them? Would it not be better and more noble to pint out a way to succeed kindly--and above all, respectfully--or what would be a harder task for such a Greedy Gus--share your fortune!

Meta-Commentary:

     "Elite Criticism of the 99%" is a parody of Sarah Willis Parton's ( aka Fanny Fern's) opinion piece, "Male Criticism on Ladies' Books." I have tried to imitate her humorous style of protest writing by employing her method of writing directly to her readers in the first person. Professor Mark Canada writes in his brief biography, "Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis), 1811-1872," that among the reasons for her success are that "her conversational style complements her content" (par. 2), and contains "numerous interjections" (par. 2) that help her address her readers "in the intimate matter of talking to friends" (par. 2). Willis Parton directly addresses her audience to include them. As Canada points out, many of Willis Parton's readers had only recently learned to read (par. 1), and may have been put off by more highfalutin, academic editorial styles. Willis Parton, who wrote under the pen name, Fanny Fern, was a boisterously funny, opinionated every-woman, whose intellectual prowess was cloaked in her folksy colloquialisms and the sheer pleasure she had in poking fun at her adversaries. For example, instead of merely disagreeing with the male critic, she lampoons him mercilessly to make her case. Willis Parton imagines the critic to be writing "in a fit of spleen--of male spleen" (par. 1), surrounded by "all the wretched accompaniments of solitary, selfish male existence, not to speak of his own puckered, unkissable face" (par. 1). She is not content to object to the critic's words or tone, but attacks him directly and playfully. Willis Parton uses a point of view that not only allows her to express her opinions, but also allows her to "see" into the male critic's personal life. Her tone is simultaneously playful and scathing.

     Fern's willingness to laugh at herself as well as her targets sets her up as an early founder of an American style of satirical protest writing. She has roots in earlier protest writers, such as Thomas Paine and Phillis Wheatley, but is a pioneer of humorously polemical satire later carried on by such notable writers as Mark Twain and Michael Moore. Willis Parton lived at a time between the Enlightenment and Romantic periods in America, and influences of both movements can be seen in her work. Paul Reuben explains that the Enlightenment period was characterized by the belief that "outdated social institutions cause unsociable behavior." Willis Parton's writing lambasts sexist institutions and attitudes that cause men, like the male critic whom she ridicules, to act so boorishly. Her individualism fits well with the Romantic period as well. C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon write that Romanticism "places the individual...at the center of art making literature valuable as an expression of unique attitudes." Willis Parton was certainly a unique individual whose colorful voice set her apart from other writers of her time.

A Frigid Fellow On the Bus (The Minnesotan)

A frigid fellow

on the bus

Occasionally

rides; 

You may have

met him-

or may not,

His appearance

startling is

The passengers

divide the bus

in two

unyielding halves

The Minnesota fellow

holds

the pole in

central aisle;

He does not 

contact

make with eyes;

you never see him

smile

But swaying,

holds the metal bar-

avoiding

human touch

As poison,-

if accidentally

his coat brushes 

neighbors' cloth

He will recoil,

violently

as if burned 

with a fire

And back

inside himself

retreat

to ride 

another mile

As a Child,

I sometimes

saw a pile

of suspended

laundry, but

then he'd twitch

and be that

man

He'd materialize

oddly

Several

commuters I

have known

and warmly

greeted too;

but never

saw his chilly eyes

without 

constricting gloom

Meta-commentary:

     The awful verse above is a parody of Emily Dickinson's poem, "A Narrow Fellow In the Grass," which is also sometimes called "The Snake." I know that it has more lines than this assignment calls for, but did this intentionally to imitate Dickinson's structure. "A Narrow Fellow In the Grass" is a concrete poem. Its shape imitates the shape of its subject--the snake. I also tried to imitate Dickinson's unconventional use of punctuation, and her unique use of rhyme. Professor Lilia Melani writes in "Emily Dickinson: An Overview," that her poems include only sparing use of identical rhyme, but are revolutionary in their early use of eye rhyme, vowel rhyme,  imperfect rhyme, and suspended rhyme (par. 23). Some examples are her use vowel rhyme between the words "seen" (l.17) and "feet" (l.20). When Dickinson uses identical rhyme, she employs it sporadically throughout lines of poetry, rather than having rhyme occur only at the end of lines. For example, she writes "His notice/ sudden is" (ll. 10-11); rhyming "his" and "is" identically, but using an irregular meter. This enhances the rhythm in her poetry. I tried to imitate this by rhyming words like "touch" (l. 26) and "cloth" (l. 30) in my poetic atrocity.

     Melani writes, "She changes the function or part of speech of a word, adjectives and verbs may be used as nouns...She tends to capitalize nouns for no apparent reason" (par. 22). In "A Narrow Fellow In the Grass," Dickinson capitalizes several verbs and adverbs, nouns and pronouns for no discernible reason. For example, she capitalizes "Occasionally" (l.4), "You," (l. 6), "His," (l. 10), "And," (l. 18 and l. 21), and other words at seemingly random intervals. Dickinson used a child's point of view in the poem, but told it from the perspective of an adult remembering the shock and fear he or she felt as a child upon witnessing the snake. I tried to mimic this by having the person mention his/her memory of seeing the man "materialize" on the bus. Michael Myers mentions that Dickinson often drew upon her Biblical knowledge for allusions and references in her poetry (Woodlief, par. 6). I think that the snake as the central image of her poem may allude to the Devil, who takes the form of a serpent in the Bible story of the Garden of Eden. She writes from the point of view of an innocent "barefoot" (l. 30) child, who enjoys a emotional attachment to "Several of/ nature's/ people" (ll.46-48), but the snake, who alludes to Satan, inspires fear and horror in the narrator. The six stanzas in "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" are irregular. Some lines only contain a single word. I tried to imitate this irregular and unusual style, while attempting to keep some of Dickinson's syncopation and meter. In closing, I would like to apologize to Emily Dickinson and all of her fans for this parody.