You Will, Charles, You Will

Turns out, Charles Pierce doesn't like this thing calling "Centrism":

...

I hate goddamn centrists.

There are three kinds of people who claim to be centrists in this country today. There are embarrassed Republicans. There are lazy people. And there are liars. There is no fourth alternative. We have seen vividly the intellectual exhaustion of self-proclaimed centrists in the laughable attempts to blame both sides for the reign of the morons. We have seen vividly the intellectual dishonesty of self-proclaimed centrists demonstrated by the No Labels and Fix The Debt scams, both of which involve little more than selling out the social safety-net.

Alrighty!

Back in 2012 when I wrote one of my 80 skajillion posts on Centrism I apparently miscounted --

Are your Centrist friends liars or lunatics, Mr. Sullivan?  Because if you genuinely believe your own premise, no third alternative exists.

-- so my bad.

But what really snagged my attention was this:

The New American Center is the same as the old American center -- the last refuge of scoundrels who still need a gig.

Because, hey, I'm a scoundrel.

And Jesus Spit-Take Christ do I ever need a gig.  Have needed one for years now.

So far, so good.

And for all of my facility with the language, over the last eight years years and eighty skajillion posts I've written about David Brooks and David Gregory and our Sunday Morning Fiasco and Peggy Noonan (Hey Tengrain) and Tom Friedman and Andrew Sullivan and, ahem, Centrism it has become abundantly clear that, for whatever reason, there ain't a single, mother-loving soul on the New American Left who is ever going to offer my tired ass a writing gig of any kind.

So given that I am basically a cheerful pragmatist, not a complete idiot and that I like to eat on a regular basis, it's probably time to take Mr. Pierce's hint and start shopping the old resume to that New American Center.

 In the meantime, I think I can turn a few quick bucks in the profitable field of high-value-added poetry.

 Here is my first effort.

Driftglass Plans To Hang Out at the Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.