The Eagle Nation

The title and content of this entry have changed. The original title – A Challenge to Stephen Colbert – referred to the Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report where the grippy and relentless megamerican Stephen Colbert holds court.

The show opens with dramatic graphics of eagles, waving flags and the swooping adjectives that Colbert proclaims for himself. Lincolnish and flagaphile have been recent examples.

I note that since he was offered the PDS challenge he has removed the word “eneagled” from this list. I don’t know whether there is a connection.

The Eagle Society at PDS inducted its new members at the annual meeting last week. The newly eneagled as well as other members recited their poems at an event presided over by a silly administrator in a ridiculous costume.

Mr. Colbert was not in attendance. His claim to be eneagled was false and I am glad to see that he is no longer using it to open his program. Truthiness and integrity matter.

Mr. Colbert does have an eagle namesake -Stephen Junior – an eagle in the wild and being tracked. One member of the Eagle Society had Stephen Junior in mind as we recited the Tennyson poem that is the mark of membership:

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred,Lord Tennyson