The Fall Of Barbaro, The Horse
5-24-06 At The Preakness
The fall of Barbaro on the track at The Preakness on saturday afternoon just 40 yards out of the gate sent a chill of terror up the spine of the crowd assembled and the other millions of television witnesses. The rest of the race felt irrelevant---as Barbaro was the most salient Reason for the mass attraction of viewers. The Silent Question raised by these tragic circumstances is: Do horses exist for the exclusive purpose of pleasing & profiting opulent homo ludens and his eternal schemes of profiteering & gambling (is it merely another unsubtle form of prostitution); or, might the question better be reversed as in Jonathan Swift's great chapter on the horses who ruled the Country of the Houhyhnhnms in his "Gulliver's Travels?" In Swift's version the horse is the noble & elegant and graceful ruler of the land whereas mankind (by Swift named The Yahoos) is a symbol of corruption, cruelty & stupid vulgarity. Millions of human beings gazed at the track on Saturday as the elegant animal Barbaro stumbled and snapped the delicate bones in its right back ankle:
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
RLG copyright 2006
The fall of Barbaro on the track at The Preakness on saturday afternoon just 40 yards out of the gate sent a chill of terror up the spine of the crowd assembled and the other millions of television witnesses. The rest of the race felt irrelevant---as Barbaro was the most salient Reason for the mass attraction of viewers. The Silent Question raised by these tragic circumstances is: Do horses exist for the exclusive purpose of pleasing & profiting opulent homo ludens and his eternal schemes of profiteering & gambling (is it merely another unsubtle form of prostitution); or, might the question better be reversed as in Jonathan Swift's great chapter on the horses who ruled the Country of the Houhyhnhnms in his "Gulliver's Travels?" In Swift's version the horse is the noble & elegant and graceful ruler of the land whereas mankind (by Swift named The Yahoos) is a symbol of corruption, cruelty & stupid vulgarity. Millions of human beings gazed at the track on Saturday as the elegant animal Barbaro stumbled and snapped the delicate bones in its right back ankle:
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
RLG copyright 2006
posted by rlg at 2:20 PM
1 Comments:
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