The Post-American World This book briefly flared into the limelight this campaign season when Barack Obama was seen reading it. It also inspired yet another dumbshit chain email asserting that the book was “a Muslim’s view of a defeated America!” Like most of the dreck which comes out of this specious subculture of conservative email forwarding, it’s utter nonsense.
The Truth (With Jokes) I read this book once in 2005 when it came out, and then again in 2006.
As this is my third time reading The Truth (With Jokes) since this meme began, it holds a record (as of now) as my most frequently-read book in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks meme. Why read it a third time? Well, if it wasn’t obvious enough, the recent election had something to do with it. I remembered Franken’s last chapter, modeled as a letter to his eventual grandchildren, about the 2008 election (the book was written in 2005) and how it represented a tipping point in the way the United States did business—read: the conservatives were out, the liberals were in, and everybody lived happily ever after.
The Wrecking Crew I read Thomas Frank’s first book, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, after the first year of the second Bush II presidential term, when liberals were still morning the inarguable reelection of an arch-conservative. At the time, I remember marveling at how simply Frank managed to turn the crux of the last few elections into an easily-read book. The issue was this: why do people vote against their interests?
Frank’s new books, The Wrecking Crew, attempts to describe another phenomenon which is intrinsic to the daily operations of conservatism—that is, the simultaneous dismantlement of just about every government apparatus in existence (in deference to the holy, towering monolith of Free Markets) and the thumping of shrill moralism. And, of course, the fact that conservatives are so very rarely called on these shenanigans.
For over a decade now, the home for urban legend debunking on the web has been Snopes.com, a personal website run by Barbara and David Mikkelson.
While much of its initial incarnation focused on debunking the oldest of the old—”escaped serial killer with a hook” kind of stories, for instance—it has evolved, especially in the last 6 or 7 years, to be an invaluable resource for debunking all the nonsense emails that get forwarded around. I know I use it to rebut these sorts of emails all the time, especially during election years when my conservative extended family forwards these sorts of spurious rumors. It was only a matter of time, then, before Snopes itself came to be labeled as liberal.
See if you can intuit this one:
What?