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We Once Thought Lard Was Good for Us-Maybe We'll Get Over Reaganomics

By Djelloul Marbrook  

("They're happy because they eat lard" poster)

There was a time when Americans believed this advertisement.

There will come a time when . . .

-We will no longer believe we have the best health care system in the world.

They're happy because they eat lard" poster

-We will accept the fact that we have the 37th ranking health care system in the world, as well as the world's most expensive.

-Americans will understand that refusing to help the unfortunate will turn us into a Third World country.

-The idea that wealth will trickle down from the top is seen as the bunk it was the day Ronald Reagan so charmingly articulated it.

-New York voters will understand that far from draining the state's coffers, New York City pays more than its fair share.

-Voters will understand that a Congress bribed by corporations and lobbies will never serve the common good, in fact will never get the business of the people done.

But not yet. First, more of us will have to eat lard, get sick, get poor, scapegoat government, exonerate the crooks and dance to the tune of the vulture class.

Djelloul (jeh-lool) Marbrook was born in 1934 in Algiers to a Bedouin father and an American painter. He grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip and Manhattan, New York, where he attended Dwight Preparatory School and Columbia. He then served in the U.S. Navy.

Djelloul Marbrook

His book of poems, Far From Algiers, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University in 2007 and was published in 2008. His story, Artists Hill, adapted from the second novel of an unpublished trilogy, won the Literal Latté first prize in fiction in 2008. His poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, poemeleon, The Same, and other journals. The pioneering e-book publisher, Online Originals (UK), published his novella, Alice MIller's Room, in 1999.

He worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and as an editor for The Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, The Winston-Salem Journal & Sentinel and The Washington Star. Later he worked as executive editor of four small dailies in northeast Ohio and two medium-size dailies in northern New Jersey.