[1049] Down With Fanatics!

Title : Down With Fanatics!
Poet : Roger Woddis
Date :  9 May 2002
1stLine: If I had my way with...
Length : 24 Text-only version  
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Your comments on this poem to attach to the end [microfaq]
My thanks to Marcus Bales, <marcus@>, for suggesting (and
introducing me to) today's poem:

Down With Fanatics!
If I had my way with violent men
I'd simmer them in oil,
I'd fill a pot with bitumen
And bring them to the boil.
I execrate the terrorist
And those who harbour him,
And if I weren't a moralist
I'd tear them limb from limb.

Fanatics are an evil breed
Whom decent men should shun;
I'd like to flog them till they bleed,
Yes, every mother's son,
I'd like to tie them to a board
And let them taste the cat,
While giving praise, oh thank the Lord,
That I am not like that.

For we should love the human kind,
As Jesus taught us to,
And those who don't should be struck blind
And beaten black and blue;
I'd like to roast them in a grill
And listen to them shriek,
Then break them on the wheel until
They turned the other cheek.

	-- Roger Woddis

A delightfully sly poem; I love the way Woddis skewers both fanatics and the
self-righteous hypocrites who would like to teach them a lesson. And he does
it with such wicked relish... mmm, lovely.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

We once ran a week of "hate rhymes":
Poem #876, I Wish My Tongue were a Quiver -- Louis McKay
Poem #877, I Do Not Love Thee, Dr Fell -- Tom Brown
Poem #878, Frustration -- Dorothy Parker

Other magnificent rants on the Minstrels include:
Poem #185, A Glass of Beer  -- David O'Bruadair
Poem #266, The Litany for Doneraile  -- Patrick O'Kelly
Poem #840, The Travellers' Curse after Misdirection -- Robert Graves
From: Dfswilliams@

Nice to see a poem by the late Roger Woddis, late laureate of the British 
left-wing weekly The New Statesman. It was once pointed out that his name was 
an anagram of "God's Worried" and this was used as the title of a collection 
of his verse

David Williams
From: Isaac Meyers <IsaacM@>

It would work much better, I think, without the last verse, which
surprisingly doesn't contain the line, "I, the poet, would like to take a
giant anvil and paint the word "HYPOCRITE" on it in glowing orange letters
and drop it on the heads of this poem's speakers-the hypocritical
blighters." (Of course, that would have been hard to rhyme.) The poem lacks
the subtlety of thought needed to make an important moral distinction:
Non-New-Statesman-reading types may fantasize about torturing "the terrorist
and those who harbour him" -- but terrorists actually do that kind of stuff.
We normally damn hypocrites for speaking good and doing evil, not for
speaking indignation and doing nothing. Unless Woddis seriously believed
that uncharitable opinions are just as bad as violence (and it's quite
possible he did), he is overreaching in his satire. He invites anyone who
doubts that equivalence to doubt the authority of his entire poem. That
makes the poem lose a lot of its moral force. 

For a contrast, see Rev. Thwackum in Tom Jones, who claims to be merely
stern and righteous, but actually waits for Tom to misbehave just so that he
can whip him. That's hypocrisy about violence. I wish I could think of a
parallel example from poetry, but none comes to mind.

Regards,
Isaac Meyers
From: "Aine Ni Mhairtin" <aine.n@>


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If Isaac Meyers seriously believes that uncharitable opinions are not as
bad
as violence, I would refer him to the opinions of another Reverend
Gentleman" i.e. the Rev. Ian Paisley which, although not directly
perpetrating violence, have been the instigation and perpetuation for
violence over a considerable period of years.  Since Mr Meyers seems to have
slept through same period, just typing "Northern Ireland" into any search
engine e.g. Google, should elicit any number of examples of uncharitable
opinions - and their outcome.=0D
=0D
For those familiar with the said "Rev. Paisley" just read the poem aloud
in his voice!
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      <DIV>If Isaac Meyers seriously believes that uncharitable opinions
are not
      as bad as violence, I would refer him to the opinions of another Reverend
      "Gentleman" i.e. the Rev. Ian Paisley which, although not directly
      perpetrating violence, have been the instigation and perpetuation for
       violence over a considerable period of years.  Since Mr
Meyers
      seems to have slept through same period, just typing "Northern Ireland"
      into any search engine e.g. Google, should elicit any number of examples
      of uncharitable opinions - and their outcome.</DIV>
      <DIV> </DIV>
      <DIV>For those familiar with the said "Rev. Paisley" just read the
poem
      aloud in his voice!</DIV></TD>
</TR>

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From: "malc pugh" <mb012b0076@>

Great poem. Malc pugh



http://www.stiffsteiffs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/poems.htm
<http://www.stiffsteiffs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/cleeveandjimbo.htm> 























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