An attack ad worth your attention

The partisan venom, let's shelve

For the moment, while all of us delve

In this criminal's past

And agree now, at last,

That it's Kony in 2012.

The Savant acknowledges the critics of this campaign and recognizes there is more to the history of Central Africa's problems than Joseph Kony and the L.R.A. but the man is an international criminal and is there any justification for the brutal conscription of children as soldiers and sex slaves?

The argument goes that Northern Uganda has been at peace for several years and that the L.R.A.'s influence has declined and that pursuing Kony and his band may only incite him and his followers to further violence. Has that ever been a good argument for letting crimes against humanity and their perpetrators go unpunished?

Yes the video is propaganda and grossly simplifies the very complex problems occurring in the region but if the movement has helped to raise awareness to the point of drawing such criticism it has been successful and maybe this is a model for how to get the public to recognize important issues without George Clooney having to get our attention first.

Depp-lorable acts

The Hollywood vision is narrow.
True crime gives a chill to the marrow.
Real pirates aren't dashing.
Their acts should be smashing
Your image of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pirates hold captain hostage as U.S. ship sails away
By Edmund Sanders and Julian E. Barnes
The Los Angeles Times, 4/10/09

The real Travis-ty

For the people unwisely beguiled
By the notion a chimp is a child,
It's time to replace it.
You really must face it;
This primate's primarily wild!

Cleveland Clinic Gets Victim of Chimp Attack
By Lawrence K. Altman and Anahad O'Connor
The New York Times, 2/19/09

So it ends and begins

Those who seek to be leaders of state
Often meet with a violent fate.
Now, as proof of that fear,
The beloved Benazir
Fell victim to militant hate.

Two Benazir Bhuttos
By Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 1/1/2008

If I Ignored It...

would it go away?

Though the Goldmans deserve every credit
If they publish his book (with their edit,)
If I Did It 's a joke
Like no fire where there's smoke.
Would I learn something new, if I read it?

Victims’ families feud over O.J.’s ‘If I Did It’ book
Denise Brown accuses Goldmans of “commercializing blood money”
By Mike Celizic, NBC, The TODAY Show, 8/15/07

Uncle Al (Zawahri) wants you

Now hiring a sober self-starter.
There is no opportunity smarter
Than a job with al-Qaida.
You won’t be well-paid-a,
But can end your career as a martyr!

[Recycle Alert: the above is a reworked version of a limerick posted on the Savant's original website. Plus ca change, la meme chose]

al-Qaida Calls for War Against Pakistan
The Guardian, 7/11/07

We mourn once more

The question on campus depends less
On what left the students defenseless
Than on answering why
We now mourn VPI
And must try to make sense of the senseless.

33 dead in Virginia Tech shootings
In the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history,
30 are slain in classrooms before gunman kills himself.
Angry students ask why the campus wasn't closed
after two earlier killings in a dorm.
By David Zucchino, Maura Reynolds and Stephen Braun
The Los Angeles Times, 4/17/07

Time will tell

Can the death of Zarqawi be bartered
For the violent acts he has chartered,
Or will the insurgency
Feel a new urgency
At having a leader thus martyred?

Al-Zarqawi Killed in U.S. Bombing in Iraq
By Patrick Quinn, The Washington Post, 6/8/06

No previous history of violence

Those with children who love Papa Smurf
Better censor the sites that they surf.
As to mayhem and death:
Who'da thunk UNICEF
Could out-shock Cronenberg on that turf?



Smurfs 'bombed' in UN ad campaign
BBC News, 10/12/05