Al Green Makes News Again

A long way to go for a punchline?

I watched President Trump’s speech Tuesday night, and one aspect of the speech inspired a short essay that can be seen on American Thinker, here. Another aspect involved the antics of Rep. Al Green (D, Texas).

Rep. Al Green made the news about a month ago when, in his incendiary, rabble-rousing fashion, he declared himself at the forefront of a new movement to impeach Donald Trump (while also showing his true colors by railing against Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza). And then he made the news Tuesday night by getting himself thrown out of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress for ignoring warnings to cease heckling the president. Nobody’s quite sure just what he was saying, because he didn’t have a microphone, but he was visibly agitated as he shook his walking stick and shouted at Trump (that walking stick is the closest thing to “class” exhibited by the congressman).

Now, I’m roughly the same age as Rep. Green and President Trump. I’m old enough that, when I hear the name “Al Green,” it still conjures the great soul singer who performed the 1971 monster hit “Let’s Stay Together,” produced and arranged by Memphis’s legendary Willie Mitchell.

And that Al Green made the news in 1974, when he was attacked in his own bathtub by a former girlfriend, who poured a pan of boiling grits on him.

That proved (as if further proof were needed) the truth of the proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” oft attributed to Shakespeare but actually from William Congreve’s 1697 play “The Mourning Bride.” The original line was “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

The woman’s name was Mary Woodson, and after dousing Al Green with boiling grits she was allegedly so overcome with remorse that she allegedly committed suicide with Al Green’s gun!

The episode left Al Green deeply scarred, literally and otherwise. It caused him to have an epiphany. He gave up musical stardom and became a preacher.

All of which leads us to conclude that it’s too bad Mary Woodson is not still with us. If she were still around, we could tell her, “Mary Woodson! You poured boiling grits on the wrong Al Green!”

ST