By Jerry Adler
Horatio athwart the bridge
The Yanks on Cemetery Ridge
Oprah standing at the fridge—
Were heroes, in their way.
Mandela shackled behind bars,
Odysseus, lashed to the spars,
DeLay, foxtrotting with the stars
Inspire us today.
But it takes a special Joe
To swim upstream against the flow
To stand alone (if not quite tall)
To listen to the urgent call
Of conscience and of indignation
And Meet the Press and Face the Nation,
Defy the media to get ya
And speak out on behalf of Aetna.
And Cigna, of PA.
Generations yet unborn
Will hear about the fateful morn
When, stout of heart and stuffed of shirt,
Joe unleashed a mighty blurt
Of cant and folderol and bluster
It was a famous filibuster!
A second Henry Clay!
Ask not my fellow countrymen
What GHI can do for you
And mankind won’t be crucified
Upon a Cross of Blue.
And thanks to Joe, no public option
Would ever make it to adoption
And grateful to be spared that choice
Posterity will long rejoice,
Exclaim with loud or whispered breath:
Give Us Lieberman, Or Give Us Death!
