I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818

On Tuesday night, as soon as the scope of the developing Democratic landslide became apparent, my rapt attention at the incoming deluge of election returns wandered off as I look forward to this weekend. I still look forward to tonight’s SNL cold open, where I am sure a royal skewering awaits, but I also looked forward to this morning’s NYT Maureen Dowd column. She did not disappoint. I routinely have to look up parts of what she has written, in order to understand what was said. In this week’s column, while describing Trump’s gaudy, gold decorating taste, she referenced, “Ozymandias monuments to himself”. To the google I went to find out what she meant: Ozymandias refers to the famous 1818 sonnet by English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, as well as the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (Ramses the Great). I swear that she uses such highfalutin language simply to obfuscate her insults from the intended cretin. Recently, using the vernacular, President Obama hazarded a similar insult by comparing his decorating style to “like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” This created quite the hubbub, but they both mean the same thing.