Comments on The Burd Report: Another guest's opinion - Are the Times A Changing...

That's it, this is the last post. Quite frankl...

2009-11-07T12:26:09.989-05:00

That's it, this is the last post. Quite frankly if a pair of posters want to disparage each other do it with PMs not this thread, it is closed

Merkin Muffley is a character played by Peter Sell...

2009-11-07T12:04:53.742-05:00

Merkin Muffley is a character played by Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove. (Merkin = slang for female pubic area or pudendum; muff = a woman's pubic area or genitalia, or specifically, the pubic hair/fur/wig for the female crotch.)

Merkin Muffley’s comments on this blog reflect his animosity towards my poetic manifestations. They also reflect inadequacy in artistic comment. Nevertheless, the pseudo-pseudonym disparaged my work, so I exercise the right to defend my good poetic name.

Let me begin with these comments by Dr Alec Lucas former head of the English Dept, McGill University, written in his Introduction to my first book of poetry, Walking On the Greenhouse Roof.

“He writes with gusto and sincerity. His poems are characterized by an intensity that may owe something to the neo romanticism of the age, but that owe most, directly to Keeler's own experiences in life. Gusto and intensity do not of course make art, but when they are combined, as in his poetry, with an unusual gift for creating images the results are striking … Perceptive and sensitive as a human being, Keeler is still fully conscious of the exacting demands placed by the formalistic on the artist, of the need for pattern in structure and rhythm in movement, of imaginative insight harmonized by tone and vision through image as substantive and symbolic detail. Yet, for all that, in writing of Walking On the Greenhouse Roof, I have to fight a tendency to slip into paying tribute to "untutored genius" and "native wood notes wild," for it is the poet's naivete that seems to give his work much of its distinction. I use the word in no pejorative sense, but simply to indicate one of the over riding qualities of the verse … There is nothing here of a fear of words…”

Governor-General Award (Canada’s highest literary award) recipient, Joe Rosenblatt, recently had this to say about my recent poetic work: "Wally Keeler is the only poet I know who lives so much in the realm of the imagination that he actually anthropomorphizes poetic devices in minutiae, to the extent that metaphor becomes a living morphism with human attributes, similes become bystanders in a bank robbery, rhythms turn into rivers, and other auxiliaries of poetics, metamorphose into a social organism called The Peoples Republic of Poetry. Even the title of a book has no defense against the barbed and serrated witticism of Citizen Wally.”

Governor-General Award recipient, bill bissett, recently had this to say about my work, “hey wally xcellent love yr book [1st INTERIM REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES AND MANIFESTATIONS OF DIVERGENT THINK PROCEDURE CONCERNING THE 1ST 10 YEARS OF THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF POETRY] n ium workin my poetik licens thanks love bill hope yr raging n totalee xcellent nyes”

Multiple book poet, Robert Priest, recently had this to say, “His poetry abandons nothing and sings everything. He's a trickster, a subvert, a secular angel and a most inventive rascal.”

Just for good measure, Lionel Kearns, wrote, “Like any great word-mechanic, Wally Keeler ratchets up language to the level of revelation, as he cranks out a singular testament that is simultaneously familiar and absurd. Warning: this book could realign your vision.”

So if fraudster Merkin Muffley, or anyone else wants to disparage my creative, poetic work, they had better be prepared to back up their IDIOTIC and IGNO-RANT assertions by milqtoast rhyme schemsters. I couldn't care less about the unassaible fact that I am a far better creative writer than anyone else in this community and I see no reason why I should be ashamed or have to hide my talent from the abundant mediocrity this blog by a large number of leftist-oriented commentators that permeates this blog.

Deb: Wally probably believes -nay, labours under- ...

2009-11-06T22:24:33.574-05:00

Deb: Wally probably believes -nay, labours under- the splendidly fanciful and delightfully pleasant- delusions of the splendidly fanciful and delightfully delusional Richard Florida, futurist, artistic promotionist, nonsensical nonsensinist advocate of the childish idea that an economy can be based on abstract art, jangly architecture and, of cours, lousy poetry.

Celebrate Wally's continued efforts at recovery, Deb. Dance. Make things out of tin pie plates and call it art. Strain your gullet in street dub. Learn macremae using cast of remnants of of our land-line heritage. Dig out that old O-Peech-EE yo-yo and teach Third World orpahns to Walk-The-Dog. Engage. Unite. Interact. And above all -Network.

And for God's sake Deb, do it all before Wally turns what I've just written into yet another who-let-the-dogs-out piece of doggerel.

Thread dead. Agreed?

Leaving the Poet completely out of this, I hope my...

2009-11-05T14:27:02.312-05:00

Leaving the Poet completely out of this, I hope my point is not lost that when women are attacked on a personal, unrelenting basis, they tend to withdraw; their participation and insight lost completely.

It is a well known technique to silence those one disagres with, and it is particularly effective when used on women, who were mostly raised to be "nice" and turn away from conflict.

I really do believe women hesitate to post on blogs for reasons like this. I know it has stopped me in the past when I've felt particularly intimidated.

If the Burd Report values the opinions of the female half of the population this might be worth thinking about before being dismissed so casually.

Deb's Guest Posts always produce the longest t...

2009-11-05T14:12:57.798-05:00

Deb's Guest Posts always produce the longest threads.

Good for her.

Geez I hope this thread dies a natural death soon!...

2009-11-05T13:58:45.979-05:00

Geez I hope this thread dies a natural death soon!

Why would any woman dare post a comment knowing th...

2009-11-05T12:57:11.037-05:00

Why would any woman dare post a comment knowing that the Poet will then villify her with charges of being a woman hating feminist for months to come?

Not worth it - life is too short to waste a moment of it playing his stupid games.

Trouble is that his rants effectively silence us, a classic technique used by so many woman hating, insecure men like him.

Obviously it works as I seem to be the only woman who dares to continue posting in the face of this abuse.

Last Nov 5, the Toronto Star reported that a mere ...

2009-11-05T11:59:43.447-05:00

Last Nov 5, the Toronto Star reported that a mere 10 percent of elementary school teachers are males. (Recall that feminists past and present espouse equality, not supremacy or dominance).

Last October 22, the Globe & Mail reported that the "Education Ministry says it has no publicly available research on the reasons that boys score 21 percentage points below girls on the Grade 6 writing exam (78 per cent of girls reach the provincial standard, compared with 57 per cent of boys). The girls excel, the boys scrape by, and yet no one apparently has asked the question why. Nor does the gender gap rate a mention on the two-page “highlights” document on provincial test results. Why? Is it possible to imagine a similar gender gap with girls lagging being similarly buried?"

The answer? Women on this blog are noticably silent on this issue, except, of course, their abiding interest in genital size and laughter at a woman betraying and cheating on her husband. Pathetic.

Over the past 40 years of feminist ideology, the curriculum has been altered to favour females. Textbooks are selected for their feminist favouritism. What is there in school that would interest males? Do the 90 percent of female teachers (nurturers as feminist ideology has it) know how to bring out ther best in males, or do they send out the underlying message that boys are not good, that they grow up to become men, and men, as we all know from Grahame Woods, the mental health specialist, in his column published last year in Northumberland oday, asserted that Montreal killer, Marc Lepine represents all men.

The Financial Times, Nov 5, revealed that "Men make up half of the workforce but have shouldered more than three quarters of the 5.1m job losses since the recession started... Women have lost jobs, but at a less calamitous rate. They tend to be employed in areas such as white-collar clerical work and hold three quarters of the jobs in education and healthcare, sectors that have expanded slightly this year."

So why don't the unionists and socialists like Ben Burd and his ilk not address this increasing problem? -- scared to death of feminist?, or just too soaked in their ideology to notice? This is a serious labour issue. Who cares?

Over the past year I have read three news articles written by women about how many women suffer from depression. They flout statistics which prove that far more women suffer from depression than men, and that this discrepancy deserves to be addressed.

Canstat also indicates that four times as many men commit suicide as women. Who cares? Obviously, not feminists, nor women in general. Men are expendable. Men are to be nagged about their lack of eagerness to do housework. Yep that reflects the skewed priorities of too many women.

Why is this important to me? (because it obviously is of no importance by any of the practitioners of the so-called common good) Because my cowardly father committed suicide, that's why.

Oh yes, I expect to hear the same whiners complaining that I view the world through my own experience. They are right. They are also the same kind of common good folk who tormented me in this small town, yelling "You're as crazy as your old man." And still I have to put up with the scurrilous yelling of "Wally is a Woman-Hater who beats women in back alleys."

It is always amusing to observe the behaviour of t...

2009-11-05T11:23:07.992-05:00

It is always amusing to observe the behaviour of those who are always quickest to shriek "Hypocrisy" at others.

There is no hesitation on this person's part about equating "beating up" this individual (singular) with beating up on poets (plural). However, no one is allowed to extrapolate this individual's unceasing, unwelcome, untoward, coarse, vituperative attacks on multiple women (plural) posting here as an indication of an overall poor attitude to women (as generalized).

Coming at this a different way, I don't think the extension to "beating up on poets" has any foundation for at least two reasons.

1. I am only aware of one person publicly identifying as a poet here. In fact, there might be more poets posting here but if they haven't self-identified that way, it can hardly be concluded that they are or are not being beat up for that. So, perhaps, "beating up on a poet" might be a somewhat understandable conclusion. However, see point 2 below.

2. I have read what this person labels his "poetry." Few -- except he himself -- would be tempted to call him a poet. Scribbling rambling, repetitive prose and then breaking it up into separate shorter lines is not the same as composing poetry. Saying nothing original in more than 40 years has nothing in common with being creative. The targets might be different but the insults are the same. The same catch-phrases have been used over and over again for decades; endlessly regurgitated are the same things first said in high school. I doubt any of it was original even back then but if it ever was, being stuck in the rut of doing the same schtick over and over again makes it boringly predictable. Such dire predictability is the death of art.

Regarding a gem of insight being hidden among a to...

2009-11-05T09:26:45.116-05:00

Regarding a gem of insight being hidden among a torrent of blow-hard words: I am reminded of the old saying that even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

It is not just in the school system that a lack of good male role models manifests itself. It is true of a larger percentage of families than it was in that different society of the past. It is true of organizations like Scouts, Big Brothers, sports teams (have you noticed more women coaches for boys teams and less men coaches?)

The women's liberation movement was not the only societal upheaval in the past 40 to 50 years. Unforseen side effects of fostering liberalized attitudes to "recreational" drug use is equally to blame for the absence of good male patterns for kids to follow. I would say the same for the absolute day-to-night reversal of boundaries around sexual modesty and propriety: it was good to change staid, repressive sexual attitudes but we have now seen that the pendulum can swing too far in the opposite direction.

TV is the most pervasive of all mainstream cultural forms. How many positive role models are there on TV? Is that something that molds societal attitudes or do societal attitudes form what is presented on TV?

Challenging the unquestioning attitude towards patriarchal authority whether in government, the family, schools, sports teams, our cultural forums or anywhere else was overall a positive thing but there are unexpected consequences that are clearly undesireable.

Many men are unsure of how to show strength and be manly without being offensive to sensibilities, etc. In my mind, being seen as an affront to "political correctness" should never slow anyone down. Aside from that, though, there is the need to find a balance between showing all that is positive in male strength without falling in with all that is negative in male dominance, which, as a man, I definitely see as male weakness.

I like the view summarized nicely in the saying, "A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child."

There is a nice balance there between being male, being strong and having a sensibility that should be highly valued.

It is a reality of attitude-change gone too far that any man who is actually helping a chilld, whether as a teacher, a neighbour, a coach, a mentor, a "Bib Brother" etc is viewed as suspect to a degree that many, many men simply steer clear of those roles.

Columnist, Matt Gurney, in the National Post: &...

2009-11-05T09:15:07.463-05:00
Columnist, Matt Gurney, in the National Post: "According to an official I spoke with at the Ontario College of Teachers, roughly 70% of teachers in Ontario are women.

That 70% includes both elementary and secondary schools. As far as elementary school is concerned it is a virtual lockout for male teachers. Boys have no role models.

And the women readers of this blog have expressed more concern about the size of a man's genitals than the dismal educational prospects for boys. Where are all the caring common good socialists -- beating up poets.

It seems that no one on this blog could care less ...

2009-11-04T18:51:31.454-05:00
It seems that no one on this blog could care less about the message implanted in that blowhard's posting: that boys have been abandoned in the educational system. This couldn't-care-less-attitude doesn't make anyone any better then he is. Shoot the messenger, bury the message.

I do have a son in elementary and I am concerned about the feminization of the curriculum to favour girls to the detriment of girls. And what is the ratio of female teachers to male teachers in the elementary schools? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

According to the criteria of social activists, I g...

2009-11-04T18:45:16.662-05:00
According to the criteria of social activists, I grew up in a disadvantaged family, and in spite of that, I didn't fall onto the welfare rolls. I didn't suck anyone's tax money, unlike some other parasite on this blog.

Speaking of bloated sense of self, it appears obje...

2009-11-04T14:33:54.028-05:00
Speaking of bloated sense of self, it appears objective reality does not exist; rather the world is only there to the extent it can be filtered through this man's particular experience. How odd.

You, sir, behave so much like all you describe yourself as disliking that it is astounding.

It might be noted that the feminist ideology over ...

2009-11-04T10:10:11.051-05:00
It might be noted that the feminist ideology over the past few decades have created a situation of future impoverishment.

Boys are dropping out of school in unprecedented numbers. We know where this will lead. And why is it happening.

For decades I have heard the mantra that women are "nurturers." Well OK, the vast vast vast majority of elementary school teachers and day care workers are females. There is a large proportion of female teachers in secondary schools. If they are nurturers, as many claim, have enormous influence over males in their formative years, then why are they unrelentingly negligent towards boys in the educational system.

In virtually every undergraduate program in universities accross the land, females are in the majority. The feminist ideology espoused equality, not supremacy. The idea was to dismantle the patriarchy, not replace it with an equally repressive matriarchy.

There has been a enormous increase of single parent families, predominantly consisting of single women. Why are they failing to nurture their sons to excel at school? Why are they perpetuating their poverty.

Unlike some self-appointed anti-poverty activists who grew up with advantages that I could only dream of in my own upbringing, I lived in poverty.

My father was a cobbler who committed suicide by sucking off the exhaust pipe of a 49 Chevy when was 13. (this is a father who failed to be a father by betraying his own son. Depression? Give it up. The man was selfish and spineless to the ultimate degree) So my mother became a dishwasher at the Ontario Hospital.
I know what impoverishment is.

Nevertheless, it was not an impediment to my life, or to what I wanted to achieve. I had to endure petty people who would yell across the Cobourg street, "You're as crazy as your old man."

Anti-poverty activists are largely self-appointed whiners with a bloated sense of entitlement from everyone else except from themselves.

If poverty is increasing, then it reflects a pathetic picture of the failure of anti-poverty activists to be imaginative and creative in bringing the poor up to a higher level.

It's the same mantra -- more money, the poor want more and more -- from others, of course.

No, I think that was Roadrunner.

2009-11-03T17:18:30.143-05:00
No, I think that was Roadrunner.

A couple of decades earlier than Churchill: &qu...

2009-11-03T16:01:58.576-05:00
A couple of decades earlier than Churchill:

"Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!"

"Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870). Aboard Hartford, Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Alabama, 5 August 1864, in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden ships following. When the lead monitor Tecumseh was demolished by a mine, the wooden ship Brooklyn stopped, and the line drifted in confusion toward Fort Morgan. As disaster seemed imminent, Farragut gave the orders embodied by these famous words. He swung his own ship clear and headed across the mines, which failed to explode. The fleet followed and anchored above the forts, which, now isolated, surrendered one by one. The torpedoes to which Farragut and his contemporaries referred would today be described as tethered mines."

Isn't Bob Dylan a Christian convert? He has a ...

2009-11-03T15:52:13.193-05:00
Isn't Bob Dylan a Christian convert? He has a Christmas album out & has been known to sing gospel. But the word "Jewish" is overloaded - it can mean a religion (something you choose) or a culture/ethnicity (something you didn't choose)

Thanks to the anonymous poster for the encouraging...

2009-11-03T13:18:14.129-05:00
Thanks to the anonymous poster for the encouraging words. I'd like to assure him/her that after 20+ years working in the anti poverty movement, arguing social policy with politicians ranging from lowly municipal councillors up to several provincial and federal cabinet ministers from all 3 major parties, that I am not scared off that easily.

As Churchill said - Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!! At least I think it was Churchill, sounds like something he would have said.

On Americans of the 50s/60s not wanting to live ne...

2009-11-03T13:02:58.681-05:00
On Americans of the 50s/60s not wanting to live next door to blacks and Jews:

Do we have something similar today:

..in Colborne, some people don't want any more "soup kitchen" families with parenting issues;

.. in Port Hope, the Deputy Mayor himself expresses a worry that "affordable" housing will bring down property values.

This article in today's Star makes the point that poverty is not only an economic crisis, but also a human rights crisis, suggesting that strategies must focus not merely on enrichment, but also on empowerment.

Goldwater's grandparents, on one side, were Je...

2009-11-03T11:34:54.464-05:00
Goldwater's grandparents, on one side, were Jewish. As to Barry himself, Goldwater was an Episcopalian from birth. He did acknowledge that Jewish ancestry, though, with pride.

My mental state is more affected by modern times t...

2009-11-03T09:21:42.570-05:00
My mental state is more affected by modern times than it is by Modern Times, Deb.

That said, remember Dylan's cheekiest witticism, one I doubt anyone else could have gotten away with: I'm liberal -but to a degree/I want everybody to be free/ But if you think I'll let Barry Goldwater/Move in next door and marry my daughter/ You must think I'm crazy.

At first glance it appears anti-Semetic, Goldwater being Jewish. But then Bob Dylan (nee Zimmerman) is Jewish too so (a) the edge of the slight -if there is one- is dulled and (b) the possibility emerges that all it is is a left winger saying he'd never let a right winger (Goldwater was front and centre with Gen. Curtis LeMay in the "Bomb the hell out of North Vietnam" crowd) move in next door and marry his daughter -a sentiment many Americans of the time held when it came to blacks and Jews.

I find it admirable, Deb, that you persist in post...

2009-11-03T09:03:46.950-05:00
I find it admirable, Deb, that you persist in posting these interesting guest entries plus your comments on other entries in face of the unfortunate fact that every sighting of your name, your initials --and your ideas-- sparks personal invective and untoward insult from one particular person.

I am sure this must make it personally difficult at times even though you must be aware that this is just one individual going off on tangents with no agreement from others.

I encourage you to continue.

What you have to say is interesting and welcome.

DJC, I'm worried about your mental state. List...

2009-11-02T20:22:21.874-05:00
DJC, I'm worried about your mental state. Listening to "Modern Times" too often is likely to induce a dark depression unbefitting a cheeky wit like yourself.

May I recommend "Love and Theft" as an alternative? Much more upbeat, and the swinging "Summer Days" always gives me a boost, although that may be related to my ever growing appreciation for his drummer, Jim Keltner.

As opposed to those who espouse the state knows be...

2009-11-02T19:56:55.659-05:00
As opposed to those who espouse the state knows best baloney