Jerry Adler

On Friday’s Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Newsweek contributor Jerry Adler was shown reciting a poem in which he lamented all the agenda items that are unpassable because of the Senate filibuster rule that gives Republicans the power to block action by the Democratic majority. Host Maddow set up the clip: "Every week, Jerry Adler turns a story from the news into a verse for Newsweek. So now, without further ado, we present Newsweek`s Jerry Adler reading his latest opus, ‘59 to 41: Filibuster this Poem,’ with a special assist from our own Kent Jones." Jones playing the bongo was used as background music as Adler  read his poem.

Below is a complete transcript of the relevant segment from the Friday, February 19, The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC:

Newsweek's Jerry Adler often waxes poetic on the magazine's The Gaggle blog in a feature called "newsverse."

His most recent entry published yesterday evening deals with Tuesday's historic special election in Massachusetts, where Ted Kennedy's old seat went Republican for the first time in 58 years.

But in the midst of his poorly-metered albeit rhymed verse, Adler set about labeling Scott Brown voters and/or Bruins hockey fans who attended the January 1 game at Fenway Park, as "shmucks":

Newsweek senior editor Jerry Adler on Thursday posted a bizarre poem on the publication’s website, mocking Lou Dobbs for leaving CNN and insinuating that the cable anchor might be crazy: "So wily Lou has picked the locks That kept him in his padded box And tiptoed off, in just his socks." [Punctuation original to the poem.]

Adler, whose poem reads like a cross between Dr. Seuss and Calvin Trillin, also trashed Dobbs and his viewers for opposing illegal immigration: "A network just for frat-boy jocks? Where aliens are put in stocks And viewers pelt them with big rocks Before each half-time show?" [Emphasis added.] He concluded by speculating on Dobbs’ future: "Could it be UPN, or Cox? They’d have to open up Fort Knox We know Lou’s crazy, like a Fox."

In addition to composing poetry, Adler also famously made this pronouncement about the environment on December 31, 1990: "It's a morbid observation, but if everyone on Earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem."

In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise.  There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which featured another Christian-stones-someone storyline.

I suppose it's good news that there was less faith flagellation courtesy of the liberal media, and yet at the same time it's sad that I was expecting to find it at Easter time.  But the fact remains that Christmas and Easter are generally times when the media attacks on Christians are more pronounced.

For atheists it's a different story.

At the end of 1990, Newsweek writer Jerry Adler penned a classic line that summed up the liberal environmentalist’s distaste with the ruinous human race: "It's a morbid observation, but if everyone on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem." In this week’s edition of the magazine, Adler reported on a new study showing our time in outdoors recreation is declining. He summarized: "So along with obesity and attention-deficit disorder, you can now, if you choose, blame videogames for the greenhouse effect." But then, he reconsidered the tawdry boorishness of nature-touring humanity, and concluded "maybe we’d all do better to give the World a break from us, so it can heal on its own."

Adler touted a study (which he dutifully disclosed was funded by the Nature Conservancy, which has an interest in promoting nature areas) by authors Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic: