Woodward and Bernstein have claimed Mark Felt was Deep Throat (IMO, Felt courteously agreed to cop to it because others were building the case that ‘Deep Throat’ was a composite and the Rube Goldberg procedure they say they used to arrange meetings with ‘Deep Throat’ a nonsensical plot device). Felt wasn’t an entitled liberal. He was a careerist engaged in self-dealing exercises.

At the time Woodward offered his incredible tale in re Wm. J. Casey, even Fred Barnes said he believed Woodward. The press in the Newseum era covered for each other reflexively. Keep in mind that Sophia Casey was vociferous and specific and (to a normal person) the more credible party. He makes up a wild cock-and-bull story and you’d have to scrounge to find someone in the media milieu of the day who called bullsh!t and was able to publish that call.

Critics of Woodward and Bernstein have been able to demonstrate over the years that very little in the course of events over those 26 months was attributable to their reporting. They were trading in information that prosecutors and federal investigators were already making use of to build a case against various parties; they uncovered nothing new.

NB, the FBI, the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, and the US Attorney in DC – working without any information technology – were remarkably efficient compared to their counterparts today. The whole business stem to stern was wrapped up in three years and change. One other thing. the three men in charge of the FBI during those years. Earl Silbert, the assistant US Attorney in charge of prosecuting the case in 1972 and 1973, and Henry Petersen, head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice were part of the permanent government. The special prosecutors who replaced them – Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, and Henry Ruth – were all registered Democrats. One was a Harvard professor who had been Solicitor-General during the Kennedy Administration, one had been president of the American Bar Association, and one was a quondam aide to John Lindsay. The whole operation was the work of the Democratic establishment. The star witness in front of the Senate Watergate Committee successfully concealed a datum that Gordon Liddy and others have made public to little effect since: that they burgled the Watergate complex to perform a personal errand for said star witness, who fancied someone on the staff of the DNC had compromising information about his fiancee.

Thanks for the extended analysis – you are obviously a Master Versifier yourself!
I confess that I responded mostly instinctively, without plumbing the depths of prosodic criticism.
Bravo to Lizard, in any case.
The parallelism in lines 4 and 8 is striking.

I liked Banned Lizard’s poem, too, but I think, Aesop, that you underrated somewhat the patterns that exist within it. There’s obviously the ziggurat visual construction, which I like because I’ve been known to build poems with that sort of visual effect in mind sometimes, or a mathematical pattern occasionally. Besides that, though, I was just thinking about the rhythm of the lines and there are some fun patterns in there. I’ll illustrate it like this with accented/unaccented syllables in a certain possible way of reading, broken up a little arbitrarily to show how I think the feet could be divided up in interesting ways. (The numbers are just the line numbers for reference.)

1 ..o.. ..o.. o…o..
2 .o. .o. .o. .o. .o.. .o..
3 o.o.o .o.o.o.o. o.o.
4 .o…o..o. .o..o.
5 .o.o.o.o .o.o.o.o
6 .o.o..o o..o.. o.o..
7 o.o.o.o. .o.o.o.
8 o.o.o.. .o.o

Some comments:
1: unusual first couple of feet;
2: a more standard meter asserts itself, but with a twist in the latter part;
3: again pretty standard and steady – only if one contrives to read the word ‘intellectuals’ tetrasyllabically is the meter maintained throughout, but interestingly, doing so (“intellecshul”) suggests that country contempt already indicated by the quotes in the original – a slightly tongue-in-cheek reflexive commentary, almost fourth-wall kind of effect;
4: this is the most irregular line, possibly connected with the mental state of the characters – it’s a certain moment of decision in the poem’s ‘plot’, what with the characters’ feelings about the death trap, noting that their reaction in this telling is psychologically opposed to that of the dinosaur antecedents – not sure if this storytelling device was the motive of the rhythmic selection, but I’ve occasionally used such suggestive methods in poems in the past, so it is plausible that such was the case here;
6: very tough to build rhythmic patterns around words like those, but the meter did take some shape after all;
8: great dramatic finality in the meaty closing iambs.

Banned Lizard on September 10, 2020 at 6:06 pm said:

In the avalanche of Trump hit pieces, Woodward’s work is noteworthy.
Somehow the poor fellow fell into the tar pit of critical race theory.

He is not alone, as plenty other ‘intellectuals’ languish with him.
Convinced the sticky stuff is salvation, they sink and cannot swim.

With an election on the line, will they awaken and pull free?
Or are they doomed to become paleological curiosities?

Seeing their determination, my money’s on the latter.
Checking their own privilege, they sink beneath the water.

I think everyone does see it, with the Deplorables alternately amused by the DNC/media’s clueless self-assurance and disgusted by Their Majesties’ sneering contempt for half the country.

She rounds out her February 19th post this way, before discussing personal preparations one might take: “The world may become split between the no-virus states and the infected ones [predicting our status by early summer] — call me an optimist — all clean countries need a two week mandatory quarantine as a barrier. Or we may (cheery thought) be in the early stages of a pandemic.”

We may be less than half way through this crisis. And this simple binary is being challenged. Why?

The virus incubation period before symptoms appear is about double the 8 days then believed — 14 days isn’t hard and fast but works for far over 99% of the cases, but maybe not for thousands. And the R0 is definitely higher than then thought, meaning that it is over twice as easy as the influenza, over 3 cases are contracted for every first.

Those are two huge determinants of the threat that were lacking in solid measurement in spring, and certainly not in February. This lack meant room for much speculation as well as hope to substitute for facts.

Woodward is obviously engaging in simpleminded retrospective conflation because of the histrionic and outraged rage-machine he works for in a city that ought to be quarantined from the citizens they cannot even hope to respectfully serve, beyond its suburbs. He serves His Master Class, not the People who defiantly chose him and rejected their elite, hoary, and obviously criminal preference. Worse, they don’t care to learn who they must serve — unless the New Civil War explodes in their very streets.

I hope they get it by then.

REALITY CHECK: now we know that Covid is both no worse than the flu for most of the young and middle aged. But it rises in risk incidence over 50 years of age, precariously so above 70.

These facts emerged as Northern Italy was beginning to experience the disease in Mid February when the first demographic characterisation of Covid-19 appeared from authorities in China, but given the chaos and China’s history of communist whitewashing, uncertainty and doubts were definite instead of solid facts.

Foreign observers and scientists were seeking confirming evidence from outside China to determine what the real risk really amounted to. “Wait and see…?” became the day-to-day reality.

This came out well after after Trump closed down travel from China at 5PM on February 2nd:

The travel restrictions went into effect at 5:00pm today. Essentially President Trump is putting the health of Americans first. However, in an effort to politicize the Coronavirus, presidential candidate Joe Biden says travel entry restrictions are “hysteria, xenophobia and fearmongering”:

[…] “We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus,” Biden said in Iowa Friday. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”

The Hill…
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481028-biden-slams-trump-for-cutting-health-programs-before-coronavirus-outbreak

…via Sundance
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/02/china-joe-accuses-president-trump-of-fearmongering-coronavirus-due-to-suspension-of-entry/

Trump was hysterical and xenophobic and not following science, declares the nominee of the party of hysteria over the mildest of recent climate change associated with natural El Niño events — it was warmer during the 1920s and ‘30s than today if proxy temperature measures are taken seriously or if actual unadjusted US temperature records are compared — with more federal spending on it than anything sciencey save medicine.

Yeah. Truth Teller Joe. /sarc

The elders and males (especially with comorbidities) at risk in demographic skew of the pandemic emerged from China’s CDC report on February 17th, and later confirmed in Italy. (See “Coronavirus demographics — very much a risk for older people and the strange split in severe case rates” from 0 [for the young] to 15% mortality over age 80:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/coronavirus-demographics-very-much-a-risk-for-older-people-and-the-strange-split-in-severe-case-rate/)

“The good news — babies and children appear to be not at risk. The not-so-great news, people over 80 in China have up to a 15% fatality rate (usual caveats, based on unreliable communist statistics and will hopefully be lower for many reasons, see below.)….

“The news on ‘rates of severe cases’ is mixed. Singapore, Japan and HK are looking at 15% early rates. But many other nations are looking at 0%. Hmm?”

My point is that both narratives were in play during February and both were true, but simply for different age groups. Joanne Nova in Australia studied microbiology and has co-authored published papers in the field. Here’s how she further explained the battle of two Chinese virus themes on February 19th, high risk versus low risk:

“The all important rates of progression to severe cases is spread from zero to 15%”

“Adjusted for the eight day delay in progression to severe symptoms, the number that keeps coming back is strangely split at close to zero, or an unappealing 14% — Singapore has 4 severe cases out of the 28 it had on Feb 11th. (14%) Hong Kong had 49 cases on Feb 11th, and 7 have progressed to severe or critical. 14%. In Japan there were about 28 cases a week ago, and 4 of those are severe. (14%). The Diamond Princess cases: 15% severe (see below).

“But in many places the news is good. South Korea is interesting, with 46 cases and still none classed as ‘severe’. Fifteen of those cases are only one day old, so don’t count, but 28 of those cases are eight days or more after diagnosis. This is encouraging. As is the lack of any ‘severe’ progression in Australia (only five active cases left [after recoding nearly 1,000]) and in the US, Germany, and France (apart from one death of a Chinese man, ten of the other cases are now at least ten days old and haven’t progressed.) Taiwan, likewise, had 18 cases a week ago, and apart from one death, none of the others have progressed to severe.

“Why the disparity?…”

Why indeed. Today it is easy to dismiss uncertainties as to whether or not a dangerous pandemic threat was coming our way or not. But back then in February, the fog of uncertainty was quite real.

Montage and his ilk apparently never heard that actions speak louder than words. While Cuomo was sending sick old people back into nursing homes, Trump was banning travel from China, forming a COVID-19 task force, and persuading/browbeating/invoking the Defense Production Act to get ventilators and PPE produced by American manufacturers. Tell me again, Montage, which one was handling the pandemic better?