I Had a Dream: A View of R. Emmett Tyrrell

By John "Birdman" Bryant

 

Introductory remark: In soliciting my advertising business, American Spectator sent me some material on their publisher. This piece was the result. I sent the publisher Mr. T a copy, only to discover from his non-response that -- in spite of his magazine's protestations to the contrary, and in spite of the fact that he is very big on making fun of others -- he does not, after all, have a sense of humor. But then I have always been suspicious of people who name themselves with an initial followed by their middle name, and I have also been suspicious of people whose names are spelled Jones and pronounced Smith.

It was somewhat late at night. I had been reading an article about the distinguished R. Emmett Tyrrell (TEER-uhl), founder, editor, guiding light, panjandrum and copyboy of the American Spectator, a magazine which has captured the attention of numerous bigwigs and other anointed tonsures on the American scene. The magazine is conservative, or perhaps I should say Conservative, for the eminent Mr. Tyrrell (TEER- uhl) believes that there must be standards, or should I say Standards, and he insists that his staff, or should I say Staff, must adhere to them, even to the extent of wearing suits, no matter whether the white shirts which are de rigueur with such suits make it obvious to all but the staff members themselves that they are, each one of them, severely affected with ring-around-the-collar.

But I digress. For I had been reading about Mr. Tyrrell (TEER- uhl) and the many interesting facts about his life, such as how he plays handball -- which, I might add, is not because he cannot afford a racket to hit it with -- for Mr. Tyrrell (TEER-uhl) is apparently a millionaire. It is rather that he does this by preference, possibly because the only person he can get to play with him also plays handball. And I read other interesting facts, too, such as that he enjoys making fun of other people -- or perhaps it is not that he enjoys it, but rather that he merely does it out of habit, possibly because he just finds the people he makes fun of to be annoying, and it is this making fun of others that is his way of dealing with this annoyance -- something which is probably much akin to a handicap, and differs from a handicap only to the extend that it is not currently sanctioned or abetted by national legislation.

But anyway, like I said, I was reading all these wonderful and amazing things about Mr. Tyrrell (TEER-uhl), and I sort of began drifting off to sleep, something like the famous English poet whose name I forget that nodded off after a pipe of opium (that was in the days before you could just say No) and wrote some fabulous poem -- which would probably have been a much more fabulous poem, and caused that many more schoolchildren to stay up that many more long hours reading the darn thing -- except for the fact that some neighbor came rapping loudly rapping at his chamber door and made him forget whatever the Devil he was doing, and as a result he was just lucky that he got to write down as much of it as he did, poor soul.

But like I said, I digress. What I was trying to say was that I started thinking or dreaming or something or other about Mr. Tyrrell (TIRE-roll), and how Conservative he was, and the fact that he made all his employees wear coats and ties to their jobs -- and probably even made the charwoman do it -- or is that charPERSON -- and not only that, but he also made them all iron their underwear -- I mean what's the point of wearing a Brooks Brothers suit if your underwear isn't ironed -- and not only that, but making them all wear dildoes up their, um, anuses, because, well, as Dr. Johnson used to say, there was nothing that would so focus a man's mind as to know that he was to be hanged in a fortnight, and, according to Mr. Tyrrell (TIRE-roll), there was nothing so likely to focus a man's attention if he had a dildo up his ass, and after all, there was a deadline to meet. His reasoning in particular was that -- as Celine was fond of saying, writing is an act of excretion -- and thus that if the lower orifice were blocked, then the excretion would have to take place from a higher one, which he apparently reckoned was his magazine. Of course it was not explained exactly what it was that his staff's mind was to be focused upon, and some of us rather thought that it might not be their jobs; but it has to be recognized that Mr. Tyrrell (TIRE-roll) is a conservative, or rather a Conservative, and that the difference between conservatives, or rather Conservatives, on the one hand, and liberals -- or perhaps Liberals -- on the other -- is that Conservatives are straight-arrows, and by golly you can bet that a man is going to be as straight as an arrow if he has a dildo up his ass. Or at least he is going to LOOK like a straight arrow. And after all, appearances count a lot, especially to conservatives, or rather Conservatives. Appearances sometimes have a bit of trouble being maintained, however, for we all know that straight arrows have a way of bending, like in the case of all these Catholic priests who like to plumb the maximi gluteii of altar boys -- to say nothing of other priests -- which suggests the conclusion that all this celibacy just seems like pushing down one bump or erection or whatever just to have it pop up somewhere else, and for that reason I guess it's no wonder why they call the institutions where they train young priests seminaries, since so many of them end up getting inseminated. But anyway, what I was trying to say is that conservatives -- or rather Conservatives -- are straight arrows, and therefore are basically anal-retentive, which makes them seem like stuffed shirts, tho they really are not -- they are just stuffed asses -- or arses, as in the case of the dildoes; while liberals are definitely not anal-retentive because for one thing they can't be because they have been eating all those hip natural foods, and if you think that you are going to be anal-retentive after eating all that stuff, then you've got another stink coming. But not only are the liberals not anal-retentive, but they are not even genital retentive, and that is why they are always having affairs which they call open marriage and wife swapping and such, and bragging about it. I mean, they may as well walk around with codpieces like the Trobriand Islanders or Henry the Eighth or the other primitives. At least the straight-arrows are more discreet about it, altho with all the kids they don't abort, it may seem like they aren't. But anyway, Mr. Tyrrell (TIRE-roll) assured me that these dildoes did not encourage homosexuality, because he would not allow anyone to take them home at night, and furthermore that using them did not encourage the spread of AIDS because he made everyone clean them off at the end of each day with a basin of Clorox and a dash of Wintergreen.

But then I woke up from this amazing dream and realized that Mr Tyrrell was actually Mr TEER-uhl and not Mr TIRE-roll, and that he would probably still go on making fun of people no matter whether the people he made fun of were ever any fun or not, and that he would still probably be conservative, or rather Conservative, and would therefore continue to make his staff -- or rather Staff -- dress in monkeysuits while engaging in monkeyshines, and that he would still continue to steal the cartoon characters from Punch because he couldn't think of anything more interesting to fill his white spaces with, and that he would probably still continue to feel superior to the denim-clad revolutionaries of the '60's because of their belated discovery of the deliciousness of the fruits of capitalism -- and this in spite of the fact that his magazine loses money at the rate of a half-million a year -- and that his American Spectator would probably still continue to be a spectator only to the undersides of parakeets.

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