Everything to Gain
Jimmy & Carter, Rosalynn
BOOK REVIEWS Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who used to be employed as a live-in couple in Washington, have written a book. Actually, it's more than a book. Around my house Everything to Gain has...
...Foreign Policy A Habitat project was started in northwest Nicaragua in 1985...
...You just open the book at random and, boy, do you need a drink...
...Permanent guest hosts on "Hee Haw...
...When together for meals...
...And you know how vague we Americans are about history...
...Any questions...
...Although, I notice, we unelected him as soon as we possibly could...
...They are better than Trivial Pursuit, charades, and Nude Scruples combined...
...And the nation rested easier, too, knowing the son of a bitch was off duty for at least eight hours every day...
...Therefore let's, as Rosalynn doubtless says, "go with the flow" and put somebody in the White House with no mind at all...
...Plus there's the matter of kick-ass patriotism which has been slipping in the aftermath of the Iran-contra hearings...
...In case of a tie, handicap points are subtracted according to the "dumbness potential" of the section of the book from which the quote was drawn...
...This is an industrialized, Western nation...
...It's increasingly clear that nobody in his right mind wants to be President of the United States...
...As soon as they were in office they'd run down to the South African embassy to protest apartheid...
...Naw, get outta here...
...Jimmy, Jerry—easy to get the two mixed up...
...Reading E to G makes it suddenly clear how he managed the Camp David Accords...
...Television evangelists...
...I won my last match with this topic sentence: Their search for a new life over the next few years led them eventually to Koinonia Farms, a non-profit farm that uses its income to help the needy, not far from Plains...
...Maybe we'd better ask the New York Times...
...I mean, I read it and everything, but I haven't got the faintest damn idea...
...There are two game categories, "Form" and "Content...
...I don't want to keep seeing the same hands...
...D. B.'s victory was, however, marred by a rules protest...
...The country's editorial cartoons would become hilarious again because Carter is funnier looking than Reagan...
...I'd like to try one of those myself and give Jimmy a little of his own back...
...Begin and Sadat were so bored by the blubber-skulled Carter family that they were willing to do anything to get out of Camp David...
...And they'd get thrown into jail and wouldn't be able to cause trouble...
...Overall winner of the first D-U-M Dumb tournament and undefeated champion to date in the "Content" category is Ms...
...Quite early, Amy learned to join in and that's how we figured out what to do about the Iran hostages...
...Send contributions to 17th and D NW, Wash., 20006...
...Let's see . . . here we go, the May 31st issue of the NYT Book Review...
...EVERYTHING TO GAIN: MAKING THE MOST OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter/Random House/$16.95 P. J. O'Rourke B:(X SPE" raicei-lizis latestcropi books with all the loving and cart* thaiour simfk hearrs and heads are capable 4 :Yaw i'andomilause offers -these volumes for $M43...
...Which must have made for great honeymoons...
...We've just plumb forgot which fellow we voted in...
...We can't go on letting them write books...
...Carter would keep them worried and off balance...
...That might be what we need to put some lead back in the national pencil and get us started THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987 41...
...The Carters ^ The Village Voice On Watergate and Its Aftermath . . . we were joined by Chuck Colson, whom we had personally never met before, but for whom we had little respect because of his statements and actions during the Watergate years...
...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987 Let's see if I can do it in twenty-five words or less: I was born in Ohio...
...Hooray for the Red Cross...
...But I have a better suggestion...
...It might just work again with Iraq and Iran...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987 39 Years later . . . we went to Tokyo and called on a sweet little elderly man, who raised flowers in his hothouses at the palace...
...D. B., a New York 1W...
...The Carters ^ Mao Tse-tung On Tibetan Buddhism, Not Heretofore Known To Be Polytheistic I have memories of prayer wheels, large and small, which spin prayers up to heaven, and of prayer flags that flap their messages .to the gods . . . ^ The Carters ^ Shirley MacLaine On Soviet-American Relations During the service different members of the Soviet delegation were called on to speak, and each said that though we have different languages, there is room for friendship and peaceful coexistence...
...Excuse me...
...It just sounded to me like a couple of prissy old ratchet-jaw hicks yammering away about nothing until you wanted to stuff them headfirst through the outhouse seat...
...Indeed, as Jimmy gets older, he's funnier looking than anyone—a sort of Don Knotts of the undead...
...The rules are printed below...
...This was Emperor Hirohito—as far removed from my conception of him as he possibly could have been...
...His most recent books are Republican Party Reptile (Atlantic Monthly Press) and The Bachelor Home Companion (Pocket Books...
...Do everything to encourage the fellow...
...Damn it, don't we all miss Billy Carter...
...You know, the Carters may be onto something here—autobiography/confession/pep talk/handbook for activism and blueprint for meaningful life...
...All spelled out and everything...
...Players then try to guess whether the selections come from Everything to Gain or from something else, such as the latest Andrea Dworkin tract, Intercourse, or a Washington Post op-ed page article...
...That was the one we elected...
...Furthermore, there'd be no obnoxious big government activism in a new Carter administration...
...Even though D. B. was working with a Rosalynn quotation and, hence, a -4 handicap, no one has yet been able to top the gem she found on page 59: I have worked with problems of the mentally afflicted for years, ever since I first became aware of the needs while campaigning for Jimmy for governor...
...So now what are we going to do with him, him and his nitwit wife...
...It's too embarrassing...
...We were also somewhat cynical about his supposed religious "conversion...
...Pal, what you needed was votes...
...We'll get drummed out of the English-Speaking League...
...The very conservative residents of this north Georgia community listened intently to the interpreter, and, when the speeches were over, spontaneously rose to their feet in a standing ovation...
...Goodwill ambassadors to Sri Lanka...
...We can't have things like this in our bookstores...
...After all, the New York Times is so much smarter than the rest of us...
...Now if we could just get T-bills to yield 20 percent again, we'd be fixed...
...Let's put them back in the White House...
...Take Hiroshima...
...With J. C. at the helm, there'd be another disaster such as the hostage crisis...
...Whoops...
...My wife has never been more beautiful than when her face was covered with black smut from scraping burned ceiling joists, and streaked with sweat from carrying sheets of plywood . . . Okay, okay, we believe you...
...a third, "Honest Confessions" category...
...D-U-M DUMB The object of D-U-M Dumb is to find the dumbest sentence in Everything to Gain...
...and take it to its logical conclusion...
...That night when we called [Amy] to dinner and she didn't come, we found her outside in a tree eating bananas with Abbie Hoffman...
...We've got all our '70s debts paid off with cheap '80s dollars...
...It was Jerry, Jerry Ford...
...So Jimmy and I gave John Hinckley a call...
...We savored the different seasons of nature and gathered wild fruits, such as plums, blackberries, mayhaws, grapes, blueberries, and persimmons that grow along or near the rural trails, paths, pathways, tracks, walks, passages, by-paths, lanes, roads, and routes...
...Carnival side show attractions...
...We didn't really elect this hamster President of the United States, did we...
...So often, the best therapy for a mentally ill person is just knowing that someone cares...
...our family almost invariably had freewheeling political discussions or arguments on controversial issues of the day...
...Professional help seems to have been applied to the parts written in duet...
...I looked it up...
...In just a short time our remaining doubts were removed by his enthusiasm and persistence...
...Examples: I had so much information written down about the earlier period of my life that I didn't have room to include much of it in my book...
...These get a handicap of -1...
...A fellow contestant held that this sentence properly belonged in P O'Rourke is Rolling Stone magazine's investigative humorist...
...Those possibilities leap to mind...
...I've also invented a great Carter Book Drinking Game...
...RIPOSTE This is similar to Finish That Thought, but, instead of adding material to different passages, a single passage is read and players compete to see who can come up with the most appropriate response...
...This is because of the people Carter would appoint...
...All right, it sounds insane...
...Marriage was not seriously considered with girls known to "go all the way...
...So run right out and buy a copy of Everything to Gain, and write and tell Jimmy and Rosalynn just how muchfun you had with it...
...Words, for instance...
...That nosed out another -1 handicap entry backed by my lawyer: And having our mothers close by to call or visit every day was a particular joy...
...e needed a lot more volunteers in 1980...
...We did elect Jimmy Carter President...
...I drink...
...When you've got a guy as dumb as this in the White House, hell, he might sit on the button...
...D. B. replied to the challenge by offering an alternative Rosalynn quote, "We need people for shelving (which I learned was putting books back on the shelves) . . ." I myself am a top competitor in the "Form" category...
...Of course, the dumber the section, the easier it is to find a dumb quote in it...
...Then there's the Russians...
...And Carter has this remarkable peace-making ability...
...The Carters ^ Barbara Walters On the Sandinistas and U.S...
...The winner is determined by the amount of laughter in the room when the quotation is read...
...C o that's Everything to Gain—a perk, fect ice-breaker for any party and enjoyed by family members of all ages...
...It's about 198 pages...
...I've found my copy is also great for playing fetch with the dog...
...I even surprised myself with some of the things I could write...
...Spend a couple hours with Jimmy and Roz and you get silly...
...whooping on creepy foreigners again...
...FINISH THAT THOUGHT The object of this game is to find a Carter thought (be sure to allow adequate time...
...We're ready for double-digit inflation...
...Maybe he'll make a comeback...
...And here, here, is the kicker...
...I blamed the whole Pacific conflict on him...
...The Soviets would be shaking...
...We quickly saw that he was at ease about his past...
...Habitat volunteers are teaching the local people how to build good homes—without interference...
...I've already mentioned that Jimmy also has an amazing capacity to sleep all night, even in times of incredible pressure...
...Using the Carter opus, I've developed no less than five swell new parlor games...
...Smith, who was crippled and twenty-five years older than she was...
...Cover blurbs and dust jacket copy, written by actual literate humans, get no handicap...
...Here's a sample game card: On Japanese War Guilt When I was young and in high school, during World War II, I thought Hirohito was the cruelest man in the world next to Hitler...
...D-U-M can be played with children, even pre-schoolers, since the Carter prose style makes advanced reading skills unnecessary...
...If Jimmy comes back, Billy comes back...
...The Carters ^ TASS If you guessed "The Carters" on all six selections, you win...
...Learning-impaired Rosalynn gets -4...
...I'm saving these anecdotes for our grandchildren...
...On/1 a selfish mmordy would begrudge Ihis sum re YEW awe of RIZ ?? lie.pray /pt...
...Get a job, Peanut-head...
...The book is passed around and each player notes a passage...
...E to G is divided into little bits and pieces, some written by Jimmy and Rosalynn together, some by Jimmy alone, and some by Rosalynn all by herself...
...Dim Jimmy gets a handicap of -2...
...I don't know what the hell the book's about...
...But think, about it for a minute...
...Thank you...
...We've got low mortgage rates locked in on our houses...
...For instance, I learned that my daddy's mother climbed out the window at age sixteen and eloped with a traveling salesman named Mr...
...I don't know if we should listen to a woman from a family so obviously bad at spelling, but, what the heck, let's take Letty Cot-tin Pogrebin's word for it...
...Try them yourself...
...But what—you may be asking—is the book about...
...And, let me tell you, it's a toughie...
...We've got to find some other line of work for these two before they, oh God, write again...
...Around my house Everything to Gain has become a complete home entertainment center...
...Examples are given below with the contestants' additional material marked in italics: It was good therapy . . . to be able to go to my shop and design, cut, fit, and finish a piece that was useful, permanent, and sometimes beautiful—or just to bang on something the way I used to bang on the economy...
...Therein a certain Letty Cottin Pogrebin casts an over-educated eye upon the Carter tome and concludes it's ". . . autobiography that is part confession, part pep talk and part handbook for activism . . . an inspiring account of the creation of a meaningful life...
...YOU DON'T SAY In this game, selections of incredibly loony, puerile, and ignorant prose are written on a piece of paper...
...The Carters ^ Tammy Faye Bakker On the Need For an Expanded Federal Health Care Program By strict disciplinary measures, possible only in a totalitarian society, and using intensive educational programs and trained paramedics who work closely with village leaders, the Chinese have reduced their infant mortality rate, carried out a broad immunization program, practically eradicated venereal disease, and lowered the annual population growth rate...
...executive...
...Sometimes an unpleasant or even catastrophic event can transform one's life and reveal opportunities that could never have been envisioned...
Vol. 20 • August 1987 • No. 8
