[meteorite-list] Proud Tom is Back!

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:17:40 2004
Message-ID: <3FD431E5.D672A1E8_at_bhil.com>

Matteo,

    Of course, you are right: the anonymous author is one of the List. I doubt anyone not on
the List has ever seen or will ever see the Proud Tom website. Who else would even know what
is being spoken of?
    And you are right, he is a "lunatic one." That is why no one should or could possibly
regard Proud Tom as anything other than antic fun, satire, horseplay, clown drama, comic
dumb show, mad mime, burlesque, farce, a fool in motley dancing about while slapping
notables with a pig's bladder blown up with air. Let him enjoy the privileges of The Fool
also.
     He is a creature of the Festa, 12th Night, Midsummer's Eve, furious fairies in fanciful
flight, Puck, Robin Goodfellow, the little people. Best not to offend. Besides, recall
classic farce: he who responds in all gravity to the jest of the fool always appears to
others as the biggest fool of all.
    If so many of the List seem unsympathetic to your distaste for Poor Tom O'Bedlam, know
also that in America one is taught from youngest childhood onward to smile and forebear when
one is the butt of the jest as long as the humor is not mean-spirited. Hence, all those on
the List who have been burlesqued profess to have enjoyed it, though some may gnash molars
in private. It is our way.
    Proud Tom, as a satirist, is a far gentler creature than, for example, Pietro Aretino.
Smile on him and he may find others with whom to amuse himself. Or not. But smile.


Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M come Meteorite Meteorites wrote:

> Reading what lunatic one writes in the site, I see the
> builder of this demential site is one of this list
> inasmuch as it writes things that only the members of
> the list know. I make mine compliments that idiot,
> however also this page will go out in few time. I do
> not say what says here from we who makes similar
> things...a lot you would not understand it
>
> Matteo
>
Received on Mon 08 Dec 2003 03:10:14 AM PST