Talk:The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Beck critics attacked Kipling piece when they thought it was Beck that wrote it

Why was "It was not immediately identified as the work of Kipling, leading some critics of Beck at the Huffington Post and elsewhere to attack the words and the rhymes themselves, being unaware of the source of these stanzas." removed from this article? Is that not pertinent, NPOV information? If HuffPo's mocking of Beck and the poem while under their assumption that he wrote the poem himself, thus making themselves look like idiots, is to be described in the article as "sparked a debate on several media outlets about the poem and its meaning," then surely the (factual, NPOV) sentence I highlighted is more than fair. In any case, it is definitely as relevant as HuffPo's attack in the first place. I am putting it back in place as I see no justification for its removal nor any attempt to justify its removal on this talk page. -- Glynth (talk) 09:59, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

One problem is that it is unsourced. Secondly, as it is worded, it assumes to know the private thoughts of the commenters. For that information to be included, we need to source it and rephrase it. Can you put it in terms paraphrased from a reliable source? Jess_talk|_edits 06:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have somewhat rewritten the paragraph to sound more neutral and less like a shill for that ... man and the book his co-lackeys presumably wrote. Personally, I think that if beck's audience has any understanding of the poem (snigger) they may realise he was mocking himself to some extent and certainly them by reading it. Anyway, I have left the refs, including to the trailer itself, though my actual preference would be to remove the paragraph and sub-heading on the basis that it was put in there as nothing but an advertisement... but galling as it is, that key-jangling moron is still an influential ... contributor to popular culture [shudder]. Having said that, it is more galling having not one but three references or links to him on the same page as a kipling poem; kipling can be somewhat controversial, but there is no doubt as to whether or not he was a complete idiot, and so on that basis if anyone wishes to delete the entire section, please feel free to do so. 124.169.43.176 (talk) 13:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Believe whatever you want, but neither an intellectually honest reading of the poem nor Mr. Kipling's own words elsewhere support you. It is simplistic to paint Kipling as a "conservative" or a "liberal" by today's understanding of the terms, but don't "cultured" people tell us to find our own meanings in artists' works, anyway? I quote Theodore Roosevelt or FDR sometimes - that doesn't mean I agree with the entirety of their political philosophies; not even close! Face it: Beck has a very valid point about the gods of the copybook headings (lowercase intentional; I'm talking about what they represent, not the poem) and how they will return to our terror due to this "brave new world" where "all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins".

(And that's without even going into the many other gee-that-sounds-like-a-conservative-would-say-it bits, including "robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul", "Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith", and "... They promised perpetual peace. // They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. // But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe...".)

It's a very valid point. You just don't agree with it. Because it speaks uncomfortable truths that your ideology cannot deal with. Moreover, you obviously hate Beck, which hardly helps one think about such things rationally, to say the least. -- Glynth (talk) 22:55, 31 May 2012 (UTC)