You Red-Haired Rascal Rebel Rabble Rouser Writer You!
(or Jefferson Unplugged)
by Robert Eugene Rubino
Philadelphia, Summer 1776:
Raw Notes & Rough First Draught
Declaration of Take Your Colonial Rule Farce and Guide It Vigorously Up Your Royal Arse
Get their attention immediately, if not sooner, wake up shake up those limited lallygagging Loyalists, go for confection of affectation — run-on Rhetoric, breathlessly bloated Bloviation!
When in the Course of Human events … blah-blah … and to assume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal station … blah-blah … a decent respect for the Opinions of Mankind … ... blah, blah .... the Causes which impel them to the Separation.
That’s the ticket! You’re on a rhetorical Roll! Go for the Glory historical, you red-haired rascal rebel rabble rouser writer, You!
We hold these presumptions to be as commonplace as the snuff we sniff: That all white male property owners are created equally superior to all other life forms of Nature, more-or-less, give-or-take; and they are entitled by their Creator to certain unalienable Prerogatives, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of enslaved Nubile Nubians.
Register righteous Indignation over Crown’s burdensome & meddlesome Tyranny of taxations despoiling plantation Masters’ reveries & relaxations. Compile additional listless List
of Grievances, Grumbles and Gripes, couched in transparently uncommonly insincere deference to whom commoners commonly refer to as “king” George III his royal highness and whom we address Your Royal Wackiness.
... blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah …
Finish on Sombre note, something about pledging our Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor. No! Scratch Lives! And scratch Fortunes! Oy! Priorities, you fool. Call upon Caution!
We pledge our Honor.
Good enough for Respectable republican Gentlemen. Moderation in the Defense of Liberty is no Vice. Or some such.
Additional notes to self:
Don’t allow that Adams Creature to censor or edit or “advise.”
That goes for her sawed-off runt of a Husband, too.
Encourage that accursed and accused Smuggler posing as an insurance Peddler to seize the Quill and be first to sign. Nothing will give this thing the Branding it needs better than that cocky Yankee’s grandly gay Penmanship.
Find out where to obtain decent Bordeaux in this burgeoning brotherly burg. Order several Dozen cases, Claret also. Moderation in the Pursuit of Wine is No Virtue. Might as well add Magnum of Madeira. Charge it to Franklin. Word on the street: He’s the man ’round here.
I like ol’ Ben. And ol’ Ben likes young Tom.
We speak the same language — French, naturellement!
Robert Eugene Rubino's poetry has appeared in The Esthetic Apostle and The Write Launch and is forthcoming in Raw Art Review. His prose has appeared in Hippocampus, Cagibi, The Esthetic Apostle and Elysian Fields Quarterly and is forthcoming in High Shelf Press. For more than thirty years he was a daily copy editor and weekly columnist at various newspapers. He's old enough to have seen Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds and smart enough to nail the New York Times crossword puzzle each Monday (other days not so much). He lives in Palo Alto, California.
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