The Mueller’s Tale

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Our German translator JLH was recently idled by Tropical Storm Philippe, which knocked out his Internet connection when it struck New England. While he was in limbo, he wrote the following pastiche about former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating the supposed coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government.

The Mueller’s Tale *

by JLH

“Can you lie a little faster? You’re moving like a snail,
A committee’s close behind me and it’s treading on our tale.
Oh, how eager are the Antifa to do their old flimflam.
They are waiting at the cliffside — will you come and join the scam?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,
                    will you join the scam?
    Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,
                    won’t you join the scam?”

“You can really have no notion of the ecstasy we’ll reach,
If we lie and cheat, inveigle, and manage to impeach!”
A few there were, who looked askance at joining in this sham.
Said, “Thank you very kindly,” but they wouldn’t join the scam.
Would not, could not, would not, could not,
                    would not join the scam.
     Would not, could not, would not,
                    could not, could not join the scam.

“What matters it how much we lie? There is another side.
Even if we don’t succeed, the b….ds will be fried.
We sell the thought that other folks should go into the slam,
And we should not — and there, my friend, you have the perfect scam.
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,
                    will you join the scam?
    Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,
                    won’t you join the scam?”

*   Formerly “The Lobster Quadrille” a.k.a. “The Mock Turtle’s Song” by Lewis Carroll
 

6 thoughts on “The Mueller’s Tale”

  1. We know who the Red Queen is, who served up the truth yesterday, and will serve it up tomorrow but will never serve it today. I can’t figure who it Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum though, unless they are the newscasters from CNN and MSNBC.

  2. Best lines of the ditty:

    “We sell the thought that other folks should go into the slam,
    And we should not — and there, my friend, you have the perfect scam.”

  3. Passing over the Chaucer reference (“The Miller’s Tale”), it’s always a pleasure to come across a Carroll parody, especially as all the poems in the “Alice” books are themselves parodies*.

    In the 1970s, Leonard Bernstein gave a series of lectures at his Alma Mater, Harvard, under the title “The Unanswered Question”; he tries to relate Chomsky’s (sorry!) theories on “deep structure” in language to music. I recall watching them with my then girlfriend, who was studying speech therapy, in which Chomsky figured.

    Forty years or so later, I’ve been sharing them (on dvd) with the lady now in my life, and struck by the number of references to Carroll. I shouldn’t be surprised; after he died, Bernstein’s children placed into his coffin a baton, the score of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony- and the “Alice” books.

    *See “The Annotated Alice” (and “The Annotated Snark”), by Martin Gardner. Gardner (1914-2010) was a much beloved American writer on science and maths.

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