Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the
Colon’s mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza
is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro

—”Somebody Blew Up America”

It was without remorse that we read of the New Jersey governor’s action yesterday to eliminate the post of poet laureate, the existence of which we never understood in the first place, never mind the $10,000 honorarium that the state bestowed upon the recipient. The cause of the job’s eradication was its most recent holder, Amiri Baraka, whose verse appears above. That poem,” Somebody Blew Up America,” claimed, among other absurdities, that the state of Israel had foreknowledge of the September 11 th attacks and warned 4,000 of its citizens not to enter the World Trade Center that day. Mr. Baraka was somehow chosen for this honorary position despite having what the Anti-Defamation League describes as “an extensive record of anti-Semitic and anti-white statements.” That the Legislature had the good sense to abolish the position displays a victory of conscience over nonsense.

Mr. Baraka himself has already threatened to sue the state for slander and for violating his First Amendment rights, but no one is preventing Mr. Baraka from composing or reciting his poetry. He will simply no longer be able to preach his hate on the taxpayers’ dime. In the vein of “Somebody Blew Up America,” Mr. Baraka repeatedly refers to some vast, unnamed conspiracy as being out to get him. Speaking at Yale University’s African-American Cultural Center this past February, Mr. Baraka defiantly declared, “I’m the poet laureate of New Jersey, and there’s nothing they can do about it.” Too bad for him, “they” just did.