Editorials / The Worst Book of the Year / Wave Good-bye
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS ....................................................................................... The Worst Book of the Year by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. J t is that felicitous time of year when...
...Yet this year it might be...
...Their technique transcended anything Milton Friedman, Lord Keynes, or even Dr...
...Naturally, this year's Coogler Laureates are highly celebrated national figures...
...NO RISK, NO COMMITMENT...
...Apparently Bill has de-emphasized pollster Stan Greenberg and political schemers Begala & Carville for consultations with "personal growth" wizards...
...It depicts him as a slave to pornography and a perjurer...
...In the chambers of the House Budget Committee, these idiots essayed to provoke "new ideas" by holding a five-minute "Nerfball" fight...
...Time thundered, "MORE DETAILED AND CONVINCING THAN ANYTHING THAT HAS APPEARED SO FAR...
...After all, reality has been most unfriendly to the Clintons, and the serene way they fib suggests reality impinges on them only infrequently anyway...
...They stand in mute testimony to the average American's sense of fair play, critical mind, and weariness with the excesses of feminism...
...Select any three books on this page for $1 each when you take a fourth book at the low Members' Price, plus shipping and handling...
...Even our leading politicians seem less interested in politics than ever before...
...They had hoped to depict the Hill-Thomas hearings as a triumph for Hill and heroic American feminism...
...It received the aforementioned accolades, and the Wall Street Journal, Mayer and Abramson's employer, published excerpts of the book...
...Conferring the J. Gordon Coogler Award on a writer is rarely seen as an act of kindness...
...Robbins has been an advocate of "fire walks...
...Al orders-bpd to VWOMal...
...The Democrats may have been grafters and spendthrifts, but at least these are adult pursuits...
...Your HBC guarantee: If you receive an unwanted "Editors' Choice" because you had less than 10 days to decide, just send it back and owe nothing...
...These women are adept deceivers, but Brock had come up with such irrefragable evidence of Hill's dishonesty and stupidity that Mayer and Abramson had to turn their work-inprogress into an expose of Thomas...
...When Copland and Thompson could still compose a lilt, and the old man, Frost, was at work...
...Compared to Nerfball fights, there is a dignity to graft and corruption...
...Newsweek opted for "ENGROSSING...
...This year the members of the Coogler Prize Committee wish to express special gratitude to David Brock, author of The Real Anita Hill...
...If you are not satisfied, for any reason whatsoever, simply return the books and you will be under no further obligation...
...Bill me $1 each for 3 choices, and the fourth at the low Members' Price, plus shipping and handling...
...We may cancel your membership if you elect not to buy at least one book in any six-month period...
...He has endured much rudeness from the members of America's cultural herd, particularly from this year's Coogler Laureates...
...History Book Club always offers its members wellmade, long-lasting editions...
...O Cincinnati to incite new ideas on the grisly business of the budget...
...According to the HERI, this year's college freshmen are less interested and involved in politics than ever before...
...European History 1 2 3 4 5 H. Current Affairs 1 2 3 4 5 I. Sodalinteitectuat History 1 2 3 4 5 ®1985 History Bode club, ink...
...Marx ever thought of...
...3 choices at $1 each: H487-3-0 5-13 4th choice at the low Members' Price: Name Address Apt...
...In fact, Mayer and Abramson pounced on it with all eight hooves in the New Yorker...
...r History Book Club Cam Hill, PA 17012-0001...
...As might be expected, the Clintons are leading the flight...
...Their boomboxes blared James Brown's "I Feel Good" and musical sludge from Good Morning, Vietnam, featuring such lines as "We're gonna boogaloo till we puke...
...He called it "the publishing hoax of the decade...
...If you want another book, or no books at all, return the Reply Form by the date specified...
...Both are refurbishing their very selves...
...Most of the geniuses can then relax...
...I believe there is a physiological inconsistency in that line, but the assembled quacks did not seem to know much about budgets or economics either...
...Boldface is Members' Price...
...Bill needs to know...
...And last January 9, House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasicha Republican-handed a session on budget-balancing over to a team of "creative consultants," who had been shipped in from some dark corner of Abramson's books remain almost untouched...
...Then he read the book and found it riddled with deceptions, lies, and mul Adapted from RET s weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...City State Zip #053 To helpusserveyou, please STRONGLY SOMEWHAT Il SOMEWHAT sTPOKLY lelustMietyouflaebrretl DISLBE DISLIKE OPINION Leo= LKE A Civil War 1 2 3 4 5 EL Ancient History 1 2 3 4 5 C. Military History 1 2 3 4 5 D. American History 1 2 3 4 5 E British History 1 2 3 4 5 F. Russia, Asia, the Middle East 1 2 3 4 5 Ca...
...Their "new ideas" included selling corporate advertising on postage stamps and a "National Bingo Lottery" to pay for Medicare...
...Our college freshmen are right to avert their gaze from this depressing scene...
...Send me the four books whose numbers I have listed below...
...Hillary, too, is on this wavelength...
...What was it like to be Napoleon at Waterloo or Custer at the Little Big Horn or Mrs...
...And no book club we know offers greater savings-as much as 25% off publishers' list prices...
...It truly is...
...The winners of the 1995 J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the Year are Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson for their inept and tedious defamation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas...
...This is where the Coogler Committee's debt to Brock begins...
...Over the next decades the British brought civilization to a quarter of the globe...
...First price is publisher's list...
...They shy away from criticism...
...This is the publishing sensation that endeavored to paint Thomas as a flagrant harasser of women, most famously of Anita Hill...
...He emerges as a man driven but full of self-loathing, deathly afraid that he will be exposed as a fraud...
...He has also availed himself to one of Newt Gingrich's gurus, Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People...
...Now that the book has won the Coogler it is possible that Americans possessed of a sense of history-and, equally important, a sense of the absurd-might buy the book as a keepsake, proof that American culture in the 1990s was in the hands of philistines and humbugs...
...Well, if Mary Todd Lincoln could sleep there, why not the "bitch for God...
...The newspapers abound with stories about how political leaders are turning to New Age gurus, futurist thought (if "thought" be the right noun), and other such retreats from reality...
...These are the 1990s, and American culture is anesthetized by mediocrities and thousands of frauds...
...J t is that felicitous time of year when the geniuses of American culture are notified of the winners of the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the Year...
...Clinton has lunched with this improbable figure and allowed her to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom...
...We civilized a continent and transformed a British colony into a melting pot for the go-getters of the world...
...You can save even more by taking advantage of our Introductory Offer...
...As for the lovely Hillary, she has been consulting with a guru from Hollywood, Marianne Williamson, who bills herself the "bitch for God...
...He has found them to be helpful in building "positive thinking" and diligence, and in removing bunions, though fire walks would pose a hazard to the boogalooing Republicans over at the New Age House Budget Committee...
...Wave Good-bye 14 The American Spectator March 1995...
...You'll receive our Review and a dated Reply Form 17 times a year (about every 3 weeks...
...O'Leary's Cow midst the great Chicago fire...
...Slavery 1619 ]877 THE VIRGINIA ADVENTURE 78-2299'99-9999 $60/$44.95' DAVID LEVERING LEWIS: BIDGRMHY OF A RACE' 98-1716 5351527.95 A HISTORY OF THE ARAB PEOPLES PA I..F rl i I [-nil T- 98-2375 $35/$27.95 18-2206 $29-95123.95 38-2160 535'527.95 DEAD SEA 'SCROLLS HERSHEI SHANKS 88-0960 $231518 98-0800 $30.•'$22.50 78-0446 $27.50/$21.50 68-2130199.9999 850/$37.50" /Counts as two choicest 58-2322 18-1612 $301522.95 Peer Morrh In 38-1526 $25i$19.95 THE CIVILIZATION OF EUROPE I` THE RENAISSANCE JOHN HALE 58-2000 S301$23.95 18-2183 $351$27.95 68-0734 5321$2350 28-2110 $34.95.527.95 18.1700 $34.95 $26.95 38-2224 S27.50/$21.95 98-1298 $35/527.95 48-2297 $35'$27.95 F, 01, Save on the best recent history titles...
...You'll be able to choose from 150 to 200 books featured each month...
...Guarantee of Satisfaction You may examine your introductory books for 10 days, free...
...Brock got no credit for his book from the bovine intelligentsia, though well over 100,000 readers bought it...
...Please enroll me in History Book Club according t the no-risk, no-commitment terms outlined in the accompanying ad...
...These are not the 1950s when the ghosts of Faulkner and Hemingway were still about...
...12 The American Spectator March 1995 TARE ANY 3 FOR $1 EACH Plus a 4th at the low Members' Price...
...Over the holidays and unbeknownst to his political staff, Boy Clinton had one Anthony Robbins out to Camp David, to spin filigrees of pishposh around our impressionable president...
...When their book came out, the Chicago Tribune termed it "CONVINCING...
...If you want the "Editors' Choice," do nothing-the book will come automatically...
...How the Club works...
...How seriously Our President is taking Robbins I do not know, but it is also reported that he has invited in a "psycho-historian" to review the psychological turbulence encountered by historic figures...
...His excellent study of Miss Hill showed her to be a liar who falsely charged an innocent man with lewdness generally practiced by the liberated donkeys of the Sexual Revolution, another progressive innovation that the Liberals have quietly abandoned...
...In a 22,000-word review for The American Spectator Brock came to the judgment that Strange Justice relied "on fake evidence, doctored quotes, and unreported hearsay...
...Well, why should they not be less interested in politics than ever before...
...In the beginning of the last century, British members of Parliament retired for the afternoon into their libraries to read the classics and prepare their minds for the next day's governance...
...The November publication of their book was greeted by the culture as a marvelous moment...
...Prtoes aril offer may dw it Canada L J (Please price clearly) titudes of factual errors-some quite funny...
...After Brock's review unmasked Strange Justice as a hoax, not one of the cultural geniuses who had raved about the book revised his judgment or even mentioned Brock's work, not even to anathematize...
...Now the heirs to Madison and Jefferson frivol with charlatans and read self-help books by lightweights...
...But enough of this flight into the absurd...
...But then there is the sobering spectacle of the Clintons and their recent antics...
...Every one of these wretches is capable of writing a very bad book and thus knows that the day could come when he might be recognized as author of the Worst Book of the Year...
...You may cancel your membership at any time by notifying History Book Club...
...And enough of Speaker Gingrich's frenzied perpetual motion in front of the TV cameras...
...I suppose I shall stick with the Republicans or, perhaps, go the way of HERI's college freshmen-a pox on politics...
...Within twenty-four hours, ABC featured it on "Turning Point," "Nightline," and "Good Morning America...
...According to Newsweek, the book's value beyond its "compelling" readability is in the psychological portrait it draws of Clarence Thomas...
...1.E:IR\F-1)1{A\l1 1Iir ]1 si and rln• fu11~l 414A nGt\illt.R 58-1937 $35.1527.95 American...
...I, for one, am not, and I hope you will relax, too...
...But now it appears that even Speaker Gingrich is departing reality for seances with the Tofflers of Wave fame...
...He read the Wall Street Journal excerpt...
...No matter what area of history you enjoy reading about most, you'll find that History Book Club offers some of the finest selections being published today...
...They had reason to be angry, for Brock's expose of Hill made the book they had underway unfeasible...
...For a "Counts as two choices" book, write the 6-digit number in one box and 99-9999 in the next box...
...Shortly thereafter he noticed that it was in conflict with one of the ABC interviews of Mayer and Abramson's chief "witness" against Thomas...
...A shipping and handling charge is added to each shipment...
...The book supposedly unveils new witnesses who reported Thomas's misdeeds to Mayer and Abramson, one being that he collected Playboy magazine and kept Playboy centerfolds on his apartment's walls-and there goes Playboy, another progressive enthusiasm that the Liberals have apparently abandoned...
...Doubtless many of our Federalists and Democrats did the same...
...The Republicans' idiocy could have left me longing for the days of Democratic dominance on Capitol Hill...
...Thereafter, you're not obligated to order any more books...
...Reportedly, Mrs...
...In bookstores all around the Republic, mountains of Mayer and Something called the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) has unveiled its findings and Americans are supposed to be alarmed...
...Their most tried-and-true intellectual standard is censorship, which is nothing new...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 3
