James Franco Wrote an Awful Inauguration Poem

If you did not enjoy the official inauguration poem by Richard Blanco, know that it could have been much worse. Actor and "writer" James Franco penned a "poem" specifically for the inauguration titled "Obama in Asheville."

This is at least half the fault Yahoo! News, which commissioned Franco and others to write poems on the occasion of Inauguration Day. Though there's no excuse for this video of Franco reading his blatherings from his bed, which has all the production value of a Chatroulette session:

And there's no excuse for these lines, either:

I met Obama once, in D.C., the Correspondents' Dinner.
I was the guest of Vanity Fair, guided through D.C. by the wife
Of Christopher Hitchens, when he was alive. We went to Hitch's place,
He had books from floor to ceiling, and said he had read…

He knew me from Spider-Man. I asked him for advice,
I was scheduled to give the commencement speech at UCLA
And there were some undergraduate knockers against me;
He had been denied the usual honorary degree by Arizona State

Yes. This is bad. Very bad. But let's take a moment to remember the alternative: there was that other presidential candidate who had such great literary taste that he held up Kid Rock as an exemplar of American culture.

Tags: Barack Obama, Inauguration, James Franco, Poetry