Things That Make Jamaal Bowman Go ‘Hmm . . .’

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

 

I’m sure National Review readers remember the story of noted fire-alarm yanker Jamaal Bowman. Perhaps you also recall his recent appearance as a rabbinical scholar. But have you heard about “Aspiring Poet Jamaal Bowman” yet? Yes, America’s favorite recurring political-sitcom character has reappeared in the news again, not for any new feats of folly but for something quite old: the cringeworthily amateurish 9/11-truther poetry he was writing on his blog back in 2011, when he was still a school principal.

 

Yeah, you don’t get to write that sentence everyday. But look, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. Who among us has not casually doodled in our journal words like this at one point or another?

 

“Later in the day/Building 7/Also Collaspsed [sic]/Hmm…/Multiple explosions/Heard before/And during the collapse/Hmm…/Allegedly/Two other planes/The Pentagon/Pennsylvania/Hijacked by terrorist [sic]/Minimal damage done/Minimal debris found/Hmm…”

 

Aside from the comically obvious fact that Bowman had been jamming to C + C Music Factory a bit too much before he got to poetasting, he’s also clearly playing footsie here with some of the oldest and stupidest 9/11 conspiracy theories out there (the “Building 7 collapse” and “missile hit the Pentagon” ones). And if you were wondering whether it gets worse, then don’t worry — it gets worse. According to the Daily Beast, which first reported this story, Bowman’s free-verse-poetry odyssey ends with an exhortation to “Watch Loose Change/And Zeitgeist” — two infamous YouTube 9/11 conspiracy videos from the mid-2000s. (The Beast twists the knife by helpfully adding that these two pseudo-documentaries were the favorites of the madman who shot Gabby Giffords earlier in the same year Bowman wrote this poem.)

 

I don’t have any further commentary to add — wackadoo 9/11 conspiracy theories are beneath refutation in 2024 — except to happily note that much like Bob Menendez, he is the Democrats’ problem to deal with and not mine. He is in fact the opposite of a problem for me; he is a source of recurrent amusement that I will miss dearly once he is no longer harming his party’s national reputation and accumulating a heroic list of inadvertently comedic exploits. In an era where House politics is devolving into a clown show, he is a welcome reminder of how some people seem to have been born for the role of clowning, whether they realize it or not.

 

When asked for comment, Jamaal Bowman reportedly dismissed his early writings as an “intellectual exercise.” It was a remarkable defense coming from a man who seemingly hasn’t done any in decades.