Violet cataclysm
Not that it’s any fun to mock Frank Rich — on the “shooting fish in a barrel” scale, we’re talking lasers aimed at tortoises — but John Salmon will not be thwarted:
I understand that a GOP Stalinist is a lot like an illiterate novelist … or maybe a purple cow.
Oh, come on. Lots of people read Dan Brown.
As for that other creature, I have, of course, an anecdote from the archives:
[This] reminded me of a prank once pulled by the late James S. Moran, described by Steven Phenix as “The Last PR Samurai.” Phenix recalls that “to help a dairy get a cow into print, he dyed it purple,” which is true, but it’s only half the story. H. Allen Smith, a friend of Moran’s, recounted the rest: after the paint job was complete (including metallic paint on the udder), Moran heard that [Gelett] Burgess was in New York. He tracked him to his hotel, led the cow into the lobby, had Burgess paged, and when the poet appeared, Moran simply pointed and yelled: “THERE!”
Okay, it’s not exactly planting a poem in Joyce Kilmer’s yard, but it’s funnier than anything Frank Rich ever imagined.
McGehee »
4 November 2009 · 7:08 am
Thus sparing Mr. Burgess any further dread of being one.