For all of our readers in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we remind you that Joe Bageant, that audacious purveyor of “THAT WHICH MUST NOT BE SPOKEN” will make a public appearance in the Philadelphia area this Tuesday, April 3, 2007, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in the Arts Café, with an introduction by Linh Dinh, CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice.

Location: Kelly Writers House
 3805 Locust Walk
 Philadelphia, PA 19104

Meanwhile, that which must be spoken will continue on as usual, Messrs. Murdoch, Moon, Scaiffe and like minded individuals will most certainly attend to ensuring that the citizenry is properly informed of what it should think. We would like to remind our readers that we had occasion to hear belatedly from Messr. Mark Twain, whose advice Messrs. Scaiffe, Murdoch, Moon, Boisfeuillet, Keller and other purveyors of that caustic but soothing medicine of the press will no doubt obligingly follow to the letter, and most certainly will promptly deliver to their adoring public with the usual bombastic aplomb:

Having now laid all the historical facts before the Person Sitting in Darkness, we should bring him to again, and explain them to him. We should say to him:

“They look doubtful, but in reality they are not. There have been lies; yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit’s work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this. The Head of every State and Sovereignty in Christendom and ninety per cent of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty State Legislatures, are members not only of the church, but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust. This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice, cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is all right.”

Now then, that will convince the Person. You will see. It will restore the Business. Also, it will elect the Master of the Game to the vacant place in the Trinity of our national gods; and there on their high thrones the Three will sit, age after age, in the people’s sight, each bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the Liberator; Lincoln, the Slave’s Broken Chains; the Master, the Chains Repaired. It will give the Business a splendid new start. You will see. Everything is prosperous, now; everything is just as we should wish it. We have got the Archipelago, and we shall never give it up.

Posted by Buck Batard at March 31, 2007 04:45 PM

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