Just came across this photo on Facebook and was moved to edit Marc Antony’s soliloquy for Caesar, which seemed appropriate to me. So, with the mildest of apologies to ol’ Bill, I offer them herein. To wit:

Friends, citizens, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury our middle class, not to praise it.

The evil that we do lives after us;

The good is oft interred with our bones;

So let it be with our middle class. The noble McConnell

Hath told us we were too ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath we answer’d it.

Here, under leave of McConnell and the rest–

For McConnell is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak at our funeral.

We were, almost without fail, just

And faithful to our nation.

But McConnell says we were ambitious;

And McConnell is an honourable man.

We worked hard all our lives and taxes

On our efforts did the general coffers fill:

Did this in us seem ambitious?

We freely gave of our abundance

The others might have what we did:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet McConnell says we’re too ambitious;

And McConnell is an honourable man.

You all did see that in general elections

We thrice voted in supply-siders and tricklers,

Who did thrice trick us: was this ambition?

Yet McConnell says we were ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what McConnell speaks,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love us once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for us?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with the middle class,

And I must pause till it come back to me.