The SamHill Energy Postmodern Village / EastWesterly Review Conference 2012

Abraham Linkin Park: a New Divide, the Civil War, Log-Splitting, and the Rise of the Neo-Confederacy
by William H. Sewer

Being entirely unsure of the post-punk pop-music era, this reporter wasn't quite sure what Sewer was getting at musically, but the politico-cultural implications were as clear as the CBS Evening News. Now if we were only granted the guts to fight back.

Jimmy Walker Dyn-O-Mite Carter: Post-Career Popularity and the False Memory of Good Times
by Cedric the Vance

Vance's proposal that we recreate memory, and thereby our expectations of the future, through present, pleasant viewpoints from humor to humanitarianism may not be strictly true, but it sure made us feel better.

Jiminy Carter: a Nation's Conscience Chirps Softly from Georgia
by Edward Muskrat

Muskrat presented his paper in the form of a Disneyesque stage show, but his point is well-taken: the 39th president is the only one left with enough moral heft to bring us back to the right path, even if we fail to heed his still, small voice. Our long noses and donkey ears tell the tale of our political iniquity.

Gerald Ford Prefect: Alien Visitations and Intergalactic Hitchhiking, a Bypass to the New World Order
by Henry Kwaltzinger

Kwaltzinger's contention that Ford sold us out not just internationally -- but inter-galactically -- is literally out of this world, but his idea that we've got to build such bypasses to the future is as hideous as his poetry.

Lyndon Beans Johnson: Stewing and Screwing a Great Northern Society
by Lean Husk

Husk chronicles the rise of the New South as long-boiling discontent finally brought to a roiling through Nixon's "southern strategy," a mix, he postulates, stewed up by Johnson's need to appeal to Kennedy's northern base. Good ol' historical analysis, this. Now we're cookin' with gas.

Ulysses S. Grant: Ushering in Modernism with a Stream-of-Consciousness Presidency
by Hamilton Flush

All the cogent criticisms of Grant's presidency are explained, if not explained away, by Flush's idea that he governed like Leopold Bloom thought. Ironically, if Grant had only been considered obscene, he might now be considered the best president ever.

Erica Jong Adams, or Fear of Frenching: the Directory, Privateering, and the Analytical Adventures of X, Y, and Z
by Timothy Dickering-Dock

The implications are saucy, but the facts are quite sincere. From the dry ranks of post-Revolutionary international intrigue we get consummation only of international relations. But let's not to the marriage of two nations admit impediments.

John Adams Sandler: the Secret Bathroom Humor of America's 2nd President
by Oliver Walcox

Walcox merely reports, but the revelation of the really private letters between John and Abigail will make you feel guilty about laughing so hard and lamenting that Pee-B.S. can't be as edgy as HBO.