The Tourist’s Guide to Thomas Jefferson
written by: Wortley Clutterbuck
Thomas Jefferson was quite
the gentleman, if hist’ry’s right;
he was among the best of guys —
now, who am I to criticize?
He’s rather rich, with fancy clothes,
and what he wants, well, that’s what goes;
he is the master of the manse —
he owns each inch of this expanse.
There’s luxuries a statesman craves —
so that explains 600 slaves;
he grew tobacco so white folk
could be enslaved to snuff and smoke.
‘Tho Monticello’s rather grand,
Mulberry Row’s a bit offhand;
if you’ve seen one slave shack you’ve seen
a million, they’re so damned routine.
The dinner guests don’t need to know
the goings on after they go;
there’s secrets the dumbwaiter hid —
a ‘servant’ looks like master’s kid.
Supposedly he felt real bad
enslaving relatives he had;
‘Someday we’ll free our horses, too,
but until then we got bills due.’
A wedding gift might be a slave —
no one turned down the gifts he gave;
a lot of people called it fair —
I guess you just had to be there.
Whatever politics you got,
the DNA has master caught;
nobody called it jailbait then —
‘You can’t blame us for being men.’
He went to France to help them with
democracy, which proved a myth;
the beautiful words that he said
might contradict the life he led.
Sure, everybody justifies
which principles to compromise;
and ‘tho this is the tourist’s guide
there are some details we elide.
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