PUBLIC NUISANCES: Worst Book of the Year/It's 1992 Again
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. Worst Book of the Year WASHINGTON N -,p-- OW THAT THE PULITZER PRIZES have bee' awarded in the arts, journalism, am scholarship, the nation's...
...Along with ignorance and philistinism, Mr...
...As always, the deliberations have been highl: secret...
...Now there are the many contradictions in his statements about what he did with his military medals, how he won them, and precisely how anti-American his war protests were...
...Michael Moore for his Stupid White Men, bu that was before we actually read the book and fron its title were under the misapprehension that Mi Moore had written a confessional autobiography Actually, it is a good thing Mr...
...And when the governor's position on the first Gulf War was challenged, the sorely pressed fact checkers went into action once again...
...For instance, it is obvious from at least two chapters in his book that he has become emotionally involved with images of conservative pundit Ann Coulter, despite the fact that he is, I am told, a married man...
...Franken's book is titled Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right...
...Franken concludes those who hold to the Republican positions are "liars...
...Yet I doubt many Democrats share my joy...
...Does that mean this Democratic contender will in the end defeat another Bush...
...Liberals and Democrats had cause to question their patriotism...
...Ever since the Pants Down Presidency of his idol, Bill Clinton, Franken has been a devotee of other people's bathrooms...
...Thu: far not one recipient has been nabbed fo: plagiarism, fabrication, or crimes against humanity Doubtless some irregularities will be discovered ii due course, but for now the intellectual excitemen in the Republic shifts to the most highly esteemed o all intellectual awards conferred in this Augusta' Age, the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Wors Book of the Year...
...Kerry has even endured rumors of a sex scandal, and the girl in question was an intern at that...
...As for the book itself, it is a rewrite of various talking points originating at the Democratic National Committee...
...The oaf had misrepresented himself as an associate of Harvard's Shorenstein Center in writing Mr...
...Another day he is caught cussing a Secret Service bodyguard...
...They worked overtime on the Boy Candidate's constantly evolving elucidations of his marijuana adventures, his anti-war demonstrations in London, and that mysterious trip he took behind the Iron Curtain in 1968...
...He has spent over a decade slavishly devoted to the only president in American history ever to be impeached for lying under oath...
...Hillary Rodham Clinton doubtless had them in mind when she warned of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy...
...I will say that as long as the French-looking, cologne-scented, junior senator from Massachusetts remains in the race the media's fact checkers are going to be kept on their toes...
...Ashcroft to inquire about the Attorney General's immediate post-pubescent sex life...
...Some are even wondering if they have settled on the wrong candidate...
...This I cannot say...
...Boy Clinton endured a Cristophe scandal too...
...J R . R. ETT TYRRELL Of course, as with the Boy President, Mr...
...Did he attend a protesters' meeting that discussed murdering American politicians...
...Franken's deep-seated longing for the willowy blonde...
...Franken is himself an obvious victim of arrested adolescence...
...He claimed other high government officials had responded to similar letters with intimate details...
...WASHINGTON OHN FRANCOIS KERRY'S 2004 campaign for the j presidency is taking on endearing aspects of Boy Clinton's 1992 campaign...
...Remember that little fantasy?Ikt JUNE 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 67...
...There was the refutation of his claim that his first speech in the Senate had been in favor of Roe v. Wade...
...Franken returns to his We fixe, Fair Right-Thinking Ann, the beauty who will not give jowly, humorless Al the time of day...
...Now he is entangled in a row over whether he, a pro-abortion Catholic, should be taking Holy Communion...
...Now we have another Democratic candidate fit to seize Clinton's mawkish title, Comeback Kid...
...Moore's infantile boo] did not qualify in the non-fiction category...
...One day Kerry is explaining why he met with Vietnamese communists outside Paris while our nation was at war with them...
...Kerry's problems stem from the fact that he is a fantasist...
...In that scrape he also was caught claiming he does not fall off his skis, though reporters saw him fall half a dozen times...
...It is 1992 all over again, and I rejoice...
...This year's masterpiece falls into this category a non-fiction book that is mostly fiction and trul: tiresome fiction at that...
...and until now none of the authors under con sideration has had any hint that fame is about t( enhalo his or her pathetic literary dud...
...Which raises another shortcoming of 2004's Coogler laureate: billed as a humorist he is but a clown...
...Writer rarely suffer low self-esteem...
...In his book he displays the adolescent's imprisonment in pop culture, his narcissism and his emotionalism...
...In 1992 the fact checkers were repeatedly called to their posts to review Governor's Clinton's ongoing revisions of his draft record...
...Such chapter titles as "Ann Coulter: Nutcase" and "You Know Who I Don't Like...
...Much of dB time, however, the non-fiction works are interlard ed with so much slovenly thought and general dis honesty as to be legitimately categorized fiction, it authors' high-flown claims notwithstanding...
...The title proved to be somewhat of an embarrassment, for after the book came out grousing that President George W. Bush and many popular conservative commentators are liars, Mr...
...The Coogle Committee did consider giving a non-fiction aware to Mr...
...Hence we shall have but on Coogler laureate, Mr...
...It has bee' a good year for the Pulitzer Prize...
...He has created illusions about himself and then believed his own illusions...
...Others say he did...
...Worst Book of the Year WASHINGTON N -,p-- OW THAT THE PULITZER PRIZES have bee' awarded in the arts, journalism, am scholarship, the nation's intelligentsia turns its attention elsewhere...
...Ann Coulter" only remind the discerning mind of Mr...
...He gets in trouble with reality because for him the only reality is his fantasy, the fantasy that he is a great man and—oh, yes—that European leaders have talked to him and told him they hope he wins in 2004...
...Franken had to apologize publicly for lying to Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of his bugbears, and a dozen or so other frightening members of the Bush clique, for instance Ms...
...With the slightest provocation Mr...
...Back in 2003 there was the scrape over whether or not he had ever claimed to be Irish...
...He says no...
...That he would insist that lying is a grave wrong reveals much about his childish lack of self-awareness...
...Fact checkers were summoned to action when a woman by the name of Gennifer Flowers appeared with a tape on which the governor appeared to be coaching her in the art of deceiving the press...
...In fact, though Clinton is famous for being a sexual predator he is even more famous for being a liar...
...The talking points disagree with Republican talking points so Mr...
...His rants about her become uncomfortable to read for those of us who shy away from intimate awareness of another's infirmities...
...Actually, John Francois Kerry has endured more scrapes with the truth at this stage in his campaign than Boy Clinton...
...Al Franken...
...This can be very amusing...
...Laboring behin( closed doors, the tireless members of the J. Gordo' Coogler Awards Committee—America's closes approximation of the British Academy or the Académie Française—have pored over both fictiol and non-fiction, for frequently Cooglers are con ferred for rubbish in both categories...
...He i 66 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2004such a repellent self-promoter that he would probably be the first Coogler laureate ever to show up at the awards ceremony to claim his trophy and deliver one of his customary whines about the Bush Tyranny or how he was practically swept out to sea by an automatic flush toilet at a public amenity that is a grave threat to the nation's water tables...
...But whatever happens to the Kerry candidacy one important matter ought not to be lost from sight...
...Then too there is the question of how much he paid a barber from the celebrated coiffeuse Cristophe to cut his hair before he appeared on Meet the Press...
...Franken's most obvious intellectual shortcoming is that when he contemplates politics he becomes emotional...
...Only an extremely obtuse ignoramus would make such an issue of mendacity while adulating the Boy President...
...Looking back on 1992, we can see that the Democratic candidate's many collisions with the truth served as a preview to the eight years ahead, a series of lies and contradictions that left the fact checkers exhausted, their role in American journalism increasingly controversial...
...Actually, no one responded to his letters...
...Condoleezza Rice...
Vol. 37 • June 2004 • No. 5
