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Five on Politics (Spoilers)

10:56 / 02.03.02

Quick request from the States: Name the five books you believe are most likely to persuade a moderate Republican to vote for a Democrat in the next Presidential election, assuming the Republican in question has already read The Little Engine That Could.

Thanks.

(Edited to add "Spoilers" tag to title.)

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: Traz ]

11:04 / 02.03.02

Good question this one... I wonder if it might be better answered by people in the Switchboard section...

11:37 / 02.03.02

Oh, here it is...I thought my thread just dissolved.

Tom, feel free to delete the copy I just made in Books.

11:57 / 02.03.02

The two titles that immediately spring to mind are no logo and alice in wonderland, although I'm not sure why ...

alas.

[ 02-03-2002: Message edited by: alas ]

18:44 / 04.03.02

I keep wanting to get a devout republican friend of mine a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickle and Dimed," but I'm not sure it'd make a difference. I'm not sure anything would.

19:13 / 04.03.02

Tom Frank - "One Market Under God"

Michael Moore - "Stupid White Men" - I'm reading this now and it is just making me ANGRY.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:47 / 04.03.02

I saw the author of Stupid White Men on Jon Stewart's show. He had some interesting info. Is the book any good?

22:28 / 06.03.02

I've heard that Moore's new book is too angry and too scattershot to be effective, but I'll take a look. Downsize This had some good stuff, but it laid on the insults a bit thick.

I just finished The Handmaid's Tale; it was impressive, but too far removed from the realm of possibility to be truly persuasive on an everyday political level. (And why was that damned afternote tacked on? Atwood should have closed the novel with the protagonist climbing into the van!)

C'mon, more suggestions!

00:02 / 07.03.02

Moore's book (I'm ~almost~ finished with it) is very angry. However, I find his polemnic in this book much less annoying than I found it in "Downsize This" or on "Tv Nation." Maybe that's because I'm more pissed off myself these days, or maybe that's because he's toned down a bit and stuck to the "facts." I'm not sure.

However, I am sure that his book debuted at #3 on the NYTimes bestseller list, and has been #1 or near #1 on Amazon since it's been released. So someone is reading it and finding it convincing, I'll wager.

I think Moore, ideally, should become a talk radio host, like a left foil to Rush, Liddy, et al. Instead of serving as the standard bearer for the "left" (which may be too radical for most liberal-leaning people to follow it, as of yet in their "education"), he should promote himself as one of these cult figures who would say anything as long as it fits his political framework, ala the rightwing hosts aforementioned.

00:03 / 07.03.02

Also W/R/T to Moore: In Stupid White Men, he calls Bill Clinton "The Best Republican President We've Ever Had" which, while true in many, many ways, may not have the desired effect of having readers vote democratic in the upcoming midterm elections.

16:55 / 07.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Traz:
(And why was that damned afternote tacked on? Atwood should have closed the novel with the protagonist climbing into the van!)

Because the afternote ties the story to the idea of the "Talking Book," oral narratives of escaped slaves. In doing so, it also takes a broader view of history - kind of directly assaulting the idea that authoritarian regimes can last.

17:56 / 07.03.02

Offred could have made it clear that the book was an oral history just by saying, "If I ever get a chance, I will pass this on somehow," but not elaborating on the medium. And it's pretty clear that no regime, authoritarian or otherwise, lasts forever.

I would have preferred the mystery of not knowing Offred's final fate; the historical notes diminished not only the immediacy of the protagonist's suffering, but the importance of social activism: why protest anything if it'll turn out okay in a few centuries, y'know?

I can picture Atwood mumbling to herself, "No, my readers are too squeamish for an open ending; they need to know that everyone lives happily ever after." Jeez, Margaret, let the bastards squirm!

18:18 / 07.03.02

Yike, you should put "spoiler" somewhere above...

...does anyone else think that Michael Moore is a little smug in his angriness? Maybe needs to take a little break in Selfawaria? Reading his stuff, it seems like I always trip over some thing that he's untidily left lying around. I always think about him, well he's our sonofabitch, but he's a sonofabitch.

(Okay, about Handmaid's Tale... I thought that was sort of the pessimistic point: that your heroic fight for your life pretty much doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the long view, in a few centuries some asshole academic is going to fatuously say "to understand, not to judge" and everyone applaud like Kermit the Frog. I took the afternote more as satire than reassurance.)

01:32 / 08.03.02

I also found the ending annoying, just because you think she's giving you this lovely open ending and then she plonks on this vaguely amusing but basically dumb parody of academic conventions, and ruins the nice ending.

Anyway, maybe a more pertinent question is what five books you should give to somebody who still thinks voting democrat is substantially better than voting republican.

02:58 / 08.03.02

Persephone, I agree that the academicians themselves can be seen as either reassuring or dehumanizing, but their pedantic babbling does affirm that Offred escaped. That, at least, is good news...and good news, as opposed to modest hope, ruins the tone of the entire book, in my opinion.

Crunchy, maybe there isn't more than a smidgen of difference between the two parties, but I think the last election taught us that every smidgen and every vote counts...at least until the Supreme Court unconstitutionally says it doesn't.

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: Traz ]

03:09 / 08.03.02

Hasty list, but oh so easy to read... (ed. In response to Crunchy)

Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy – Robert McChesney

Cutting Corporate Welfare – Ralph Nader

Toxic Sludge is Good for You – Stauber and Rampton

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire – Gore Vidal

9-11 – Noam Chomsky

maybe

(ed.)

Longer works...

Capital Vol. 1; The Peoples History of the United States; Manufacturing Consent; Rich Media, Poor Democracy; and leave in the Vidal above...

Of course, and list should be tailored to the friend's interests...

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: [Your Name Here] ]

03:20 / 08.03.02

They all sound good. Is the Vidal book fiction or non?

03:27 / 08.03.02

Non. Draws parallells between the, ahem, founding fathers' and present US political reality (among other things, ed.)

I don't think fiction does any convincing... not all by itself anyway.

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: [Your Name Here] ]

17:02 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Traz:
Persephone, I agree that the academicians themselves can be seen as either reassuring or dehumanizing, but their pedantic babbling does affirm that Offred escaped. That, at least, is good news...and good news, as opposed to modest hope, ruins the tone of the entire book, in my opinion.

Does it? I rather got the opposite impression - that she got nabbed and all that was left were these cassettes in the trailer. (Thus the "talking book" thing, rather than a simple 1st person narrative.)

Anyway, I feel like I should try to suggest another book. As a rerailment.

Odd. The only one that comes to mind is Al Franken's meticulously researched Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.
He's still quite the media star, has a magazine (The Limbaugh Letter) that is relied upon as a source of facts for Conservative armchair debaters. And he is, as Franken points out, a Big Fat Idiot. And digs up *reams* of facts to back it up.
It's probably a bit dated now, but still - worth pointing out.