originals

History’s Great Writers Describe Sean Spicer in the Bushes

Shakespeare

 

The rogue fled from me like quicksilver, and hid himself in the brakes,

And left me to the mercy of the mumblenewses.

Fie, tidy little Bartholomew boar-pig! ’Twas a thicket of lies!




 

Hemingway

 

When I woke it was the sound of Chuck Schumer’s head exploding that announced the release of the press corps from the cubicles at the edge of town. The White House drive was empty. The Twitters were crowded with people. Suddenly Sean Spicer and two spokeswomen came down the drive. They were all speed-walking, packed close together. They passed along and up the drive toward the television sets and behind them came more White House staffers speed-walking faster, and then some stragglers who were really speed-walking. Behind them was a little bare space, and then the White House correspondents, galloping, tossing their heads up and down. Sean fell, rolled into the bushes, and lay quiet. The correspondents charged him. They were all running together.


 

Dr. Seuss

 

There were hedges here, there, and everywhere! Two tall and twenty small. Hid amid, he did!


 

Edgar Allan Poe

 

For the most wild narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not, and very surely do I not dream. One night, on my way home, much intoxicated after again drowning my post-election woes in whiskey, I passed the dwelling of the Orange Conqueror Worm. About the black thickets a dense crowd had gathered, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of them with very minute and eager attention. The words “Comey!” “Russia!” “Rosenstein!” “Probe!” and other similar expressions excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the branches, the figure of a mumbling, muttering mime in a dark suit. When I first beheld this phantasm—for I could scarcely regard it as less—my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. Lo! It was but a briar within a briar!


 

Allen Ginsberg

 

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Hillary Rodham, for I

walked down the sidestreets of D.C. under the trees with a migraine

self-pitying looking at the moon.

In my political fatigue, and shopping for images, I went to the

warmly lit White House, dreaming of your campaign promises!

What oranges and what outrages! An entire administration hiding out

at night! Hallways full of weary aides! Mike locked in his office, Sarah

at her outdoor set!—and you, Sean Spicer, what were you doing

down by the bushes?


 

George Orwell

 

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the tremendous power arrayed against him, the combativeness with which a certain Party surrogate would overthrow him in debate, the hostile, condescending responses which he would not be able to understand. And yet he was right! Truisms are true, hold onto that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, bushes are bushy. With the feeling that he was speaking to Taylor Swift, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two bushes plus two bushes make four bushes. If that is granted, all else follows. Big Brother is watching you from the bushes.


 

Walt Whitman

 

In the dooryard fronting an old Federal-style house,

near the white-wash’d columns,

Stands the bush, tall-growing, with

heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate,

with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a hiding place…and from this

bush in the dooryard

With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped

leaves of rich green,

A sprig, with its flower, that filthy Presidentiad breaks.


 

Hunter S. Thompson

 

In a closed presidency where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught in the creepers. In a world of kleptocrats, the only final sin is shrubbery stupidity.