* RADIO RANT—Literary Quibbles

Last night [7/12/07], Michael Savage attributed one of his self-serving, moralistic quotations to "John Dryden, English essayist." Sure, the greatest British playwright (& poet) of his day wrote essays, too, but this is like saying "James Joyce, English poet" or "John Milton, Puritan pamphleteer." Obviously, Savage isn't familiar with Dryden and got the attribution from a quotation dictionary or somewhere equally shallow. I only bring this quibble up because Savage also frequently brags about his literary knowledge, his former acquaintance with the Beat poets (whom he despises now, of course), and his polymathic erudition.

This reminds me of Rush Limbaugh's unfortunate foray into literary criticism, after Maya Angelou's reading at Bill Clinton's first inaugural: "You call that poetry?! It doesn't even rhyme!" Of course, this response had much more to do with his knee-jerk antagonism towards a Democratic president and a woman writer of color than it did with professing an obsolete (or 8th-grade) criterion for good poetry.