Michael [J.] Lally Weighs In on College Loans [by David Lehman]

Readers of this column know that I enjoy reporting on news stories featuring namesakes of greatly beloved and important people. Usually the new people with the great old name have chosen professions you would not have imagined for them. The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (pictured at left) was as dour as his surname, which means churchyard in Danish.  The latter-day bearer of his name is an expert on international monetary policy and is as even-handed as you could expect an economist to be. Former defense secretary Chuck Hagel had an undeniable extra layer of personality thanks to his forerunner -- the formidable professor G. W. F. Hegel with his dialectical progression via continual strife toward the world of pure spirit. Philip Roth is a financial analyst with a prestigious Wall Street firm who believes that the bull still has room to run in the stock market.  

Michael Lally is the latest poet to witness, or be subject to, this phenomenon -- which is a bit like the inverse of Andrei Codrescu's idea that each of us has or can have a ghostly collaborator. Our Michael will be bemused to learn of the existence of Michael J. Lally of Overland Park, Kansas, who issued a devastating critique  of government-sponsored student-loan programs, which he considers noble in idea but horrible in effect. "The program today has dramatically inflated the cost of college, led to a proliferation of worthless degrees, and now provides me the privilege of paying the cost of other people's bad decisions." That's from the Wall Street Journal of Saturday / Sunday. June 2-3, 2018, p. A 14.

  Now it is always possible that our Michael has given himself a misleading middle initial and a Kansas address to get away with this cogent analysis of a vexing problem that illustrates the rhetorical value of the three-pronged clause ("has dramatically inflated. . .led to . . .and now provides me"), though the sarcasm in "the privilege of paying" doesn't sound at all like the Michael I know -- which just shows how he will surprise you if you're napping. On the right is his photo, which is how the man looked when he and I first met. I don't have a more recent photo at hand but am rushing to post this, for the lad has a magnum opus out this year and rumor has it that he and Terence Winch are reading in Washington DC -- like old times -- on Sunday, June 10. -- DL

Comments

[lally]

honored to be included among those worthy of your attention, David,
even if that means being now forever connected to the nefarious Michael "J."...
(in a few very early poems published in little mags in the first years of the 1960s
I used my official middle initial "D." for, (drum roll followed by rim shot) "David")...

[The Best American Poetry]

I might have guessed you'd have the most beautiful middle name in the language, Mikey David. Cheers! -- DL