SubscribeThe Post-American World
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The Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria - Publisher: W. W. Norton
- Year: 2008
- Pages: 288
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №69
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)
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The Truth (With Jokes)
by Al Franken - Publisher: Dutton
- Year: 2005
- Pages: 352
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №66
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
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The Wrecking Crew
by Thomas Frank - Publisher: Metropolitan Books
- Year: 2008
- Pages: 384
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №65
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.
In defense of Snopes
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.
Republican logic
See if you can intuit this one:
- A bailout plan, created in the White House and pushed extensively by President Bush, is sent to Congress.
- A majority (≈60%) of Democrats voted for the bill.
- A majority (≈67%) of Republicans voted against the bill.
- “Republicans blamed [Nancy Pelosi]… for the vote’s failure.”
What?
I Am America (And So Can You!)
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I Am America (And So Can You!)
by Stephen Colbert - Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 240
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №51
Living perpetually in Jon Stewart’s shadow, Stephen Colbert now throws his hat into a ring already occupied by America the Book with his own, an impressive looking tome bafflingly titled I Am America (And So Can You!).
I should first qualify my own thoughts by saying that while I am a fan of The Daily Show, I’ve never really gotten into The Colbert Report. Stephen makes a good right-wing blowhard, but the schtick gets tired when it’s repeated for 30 minutes, Monday through Thursday, without fail. There’s only so far you can take it.
Now, while America the Book spoofed a social sciences textbook, and did a truly excellent job, I Am America (And So Can You!) struggles to find its genre. It’s part satirical autobiography (when it remembers) and part random punditry. What I think was most off-putting was how inconsistent Colbert’s character seems. Maybe I’ve just never noticed it on his show, but playing a conservative evangelical Republican who happens to be an arrogant Catholic. As well, the literary wink-wink-nudge-nudge of Colbert’s satire is sometimes so overt that one wonders what the point of the persona is. And the direction of the humor is more or less always the same: The Daily Show, and similarly America the Book were Equal Opportunity lampooners, taking aim at government folly on both sides of the aisle. But Colbert, in show and book, flogs this “I Am Bill O’Reilly” horse long after it’s dead. The humor doesn’t last.
That all being said, there are good things to say about the book. It has some funny parts: the entire book is annotated in a style reminiscent of the on-screen text in his “The Word” segment, and the witty repartee between the text proper and more mischievous annotator is pretty consistently funny. Also, the production qualities on this book are extraordinarily high. Not as high as its cousin, necessarily, but high nonetheless.
I feel bad thrashing Colbert’s book, because I know he’s a talented satirist. But I can’t help but feel as though this book was reaching farther than the schtick could successfully go. By the time the book finished up with a transcript of Colbert’s controversial 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner act, I just wanted the book to be over with. That doesn’t speak very well of the book’s qualities.
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