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Bernard Goldberg is back with another zinger: 100 People Who are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37). An editorial review follows:

No preaching. No pontificating. Just some uncommon sense about the things that have made this country great -- and the culprits who are screwing it up.

Bernard Goldberg takes dead aim at the America Bashers (the cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at "ordinary" Americans) ... the Hollywood Blowhards (incredibly ditzy celebrities who think they're smart just because they're famous) ... the TV Schlockmeisters (including the one whose show has been compared to a churning mass of maggots devouring rotten meat) ... the Intellectual Thugs (bigwigs at some of our best colleges, whose views run the gamut from left wing to far left wing) ... and many more.

Goldberg names names, counting down the villains in his rogues' gallery from 100 all the way to 1 -- and, yes, you-know-who is number 37. Some supposedly "serious" journalists also made the list, including the journalist-diva who sold out her integrity and hosted one of the dumbest hours in the history of network television news. And there are those famous miscreants who have made America a nastier place than it ought to be -- a far more selfish, vulgar, and cynical place.

But Goldberg doesn't just round up the usual suspects we have come to know and detest. He also exposes some of the people who operate away from the limelight but still manage to pull a lot of strings and do all sorts of harm to our culture. Most of all, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is about a country where as long as anything goes, as one of the good guys in the book puts it, sooner or later everything will go.

This is serious stuff for sure. But Goldberg will also make you laugh as he harpoons scoundrels like the congresswoman who thinks there aren't enough hurricanes named after black people, and the environmentalist to the stars who yells at total strangers driving SUVs -- even though she tools around the country in a gas-guzzling private jet.

With Bias, Bernard Goldberg took us behind the scenes and exposed the way Big Journalism distorts the news. Now he has written a book that goes even further. This time he casts his eye on American culture at large -- and the result is a book that is sure to become the voice of all those Americans who feel that no one is speaking for them on perhaps the most vital issue of all: the kind of country in which we want to live.


It's fun to read the reviews.

I don't have the book, but wonder who's on the list . . . and who's number one? If you don't know, then who do you think should be?
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I don't have the book, but wonder who's on the list . . . and who's number one? If you don't know, then who do you think should be?

That�s exactly what I was wondering, Phil. Hillary comes to mind but I doubt she�s #1. Michael Moore surely could be in the top ten, if not #1. Ted Kennedy? Jesse Jackson? Barbra Streisand? There might even be a Supreme Court Justice or two in the top 10, possibly even taking the top slot. I wonder.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I've read some of the Amazon reviews (hilarious, at times), and Moore is #1. Interestingly, Jimmy Carter is #6.

-----

Here's the top 10:

1. Michael Moore, filmmaker

2. Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times

3. Ted Kennedy, Democratic U.S. senator, Massachusetts

4. Jesse Jackson, Democratic African-American activist

5. Anthony Romero, American Civil Liberties Union's executive director

6. Jimmy Carter, former Democratic president

7. Margaret Marshall, chief justice, Massachusetts state Supreme Court

8. Paul Krugman, columnist at The New York Times

9. Jonathan Kozol, education scholar and author

10. Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way

-------

Here's a review from the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c...81_mcdermott05m.html
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Here's a review from the Seattle Times:

I�m flinching, Phil, before I even read it. Surely the Times would make the list if they extended it to 250. Wink

Almost as bad for the United States as McDermott is the city of Seattle, which is described as "ground zero for overpriced coffee," home of more "progressive loonies than anyplace else on the Left Coast."

Welcome to my world. Well, at least there is a wide, deep Puget Sound between me and them. Seattle (and in particular, King County) are so "progressively" liberal and government-is-the-solution top-heavy that they have already partially chased away Boeing who moved their headquarters to Chicago and has long made rumblings about the stifling and costly bureaucracy of the area�s governments.

But Goldberg�s point regarding coffee is a needlessly flippant one and paints him (at least on this occasion) as no more thoughtful than a guy such as McDermott. The coffee is actually pretty good here and we have Starbucks, to a great degree, to thank for that. It doesn�t sound like humor is Goldberg�s strength.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Jimmy Carter: Useful Idiot

quote:
Does Carter wonder about the human rights abuses of innocent Iraqis at the hands of people who plan and carry out suicide bombings? The ambushes of marketplaces and other public areas by terrorists who are not wearing official uniforms, but who wear civilian clothing in order to blend in and strike with callous, vicious efficiency?

The fact that these prisoners get more humane treatment overall by our soldiers in Guantanamo Bay than those imprisoned by Castro or Chavez, Carter's buddies, says more about Carter than his pretty speeches ever could.

Abuses can occur in any environment where one is imprisoned by someone else. But for Jimmy Carter to place our treatment of prisoners who do not qualify for Geneva Convention rules beneath the treatment of prisoners of brutal dictators whose "elections" he condones is beyond the pale.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Exactly, Brad!

To show how dumb the whole thing is, Carter laments the treatment of prisoners at Gtmo, which has been shown to be very rare and nothing even qualifying as worthy of disciplinary action (as opposed to Abu Graib). His solution? Move the prison somewhere else. Now what's that supposed to accomplish? Why couldn't there be abuse somewhere else?
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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How does president Carter feel about Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients? Fact is that it works.
Can you imagine the crapstorm from Carter if we proposed this measure?

http://partners.nytimes.com/li.../101695sci-aids.html

When you get to #8, I tend to agree with Krugman some of the time. Maybe I can play Devil's Advocate. (yeah, I have an evil twin) Smiler
 
Posts: 2559 | Registered: 14 June 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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