Lying is Easy, Comedy is Hard
I’m guessing Tom is too busy with his tour preparations to plug a certain book that’s coming out today….
Looking at the book’s page on Amazon, I noticed this slightly disturbing association :
I don’t know who would be interested in a book by a torture-loving goober like Horowitz and a book of hilarious political cartoons, but apparently there’s at least one of you out there. Since you already know how great This Modern World is, I’ll forgo the sales pitch and offer this bit of advice :
Don’t buy The Professors by David Horowitz
Seriously, it’s the same “radical professors” crap that conservatives have been whining about for years. We’ve seen this argument a million times before and it’s still as simple-minded as it was forty years ago. To conservatives like Horowitz, liberalism on college campuses is the result of political bias and intolerance for alternative views. While cherry-picked examples of political correctness run amok can certainly be strung together to support that thesis, there’s a more obvious answer that’s being overlooked by the egomaniacs on the right. When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong. If Horowitz and his peers had the slightest bit of humility, they’d take the unpopularity of their views among intellectuals as a sign that they might need to reevaluate their views. But that would require flip-flopping and we all know how wingnuts feel about that.
So now that you know which book you shouldn’t buy, lemme highlight part of what Giant Magazine had to say about Hell in a Handbasket :
It also showcases how infuriated he is with the current administration. We probably don’t need to tell you that Tomorrow’s opinions lean to the left–the book’s cover, which features President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove sporting devil horns, speaks volumes. Yet he never falls into blind partisanship. Even as Tomorrow rips into the president’s buffoonery, his political advisors’ twisting of the truth and fox news’s insulting and divisive rhetoric, he comes off not as a vengeful sour-grapes Democrat but as an articulate and thoughtful man who is genuinely concerned about the future.Daniel Perkins has been making cartoons for over 20 years, and his work has never been sharper. This Modern World stands out as a voice of reason, pointing out the trouble we’re in and providing comfort to those who already recognize it. Who knows–maybe someday we’ll be able to look back on all of this and laugh.
So pick up Hell in a Handbasket and catch Tom next week on tour.
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Please be assured that my copy, pre-ordered, has been shipped.
Of course, I also ordered “The Magic Serpent” and “The Complete Diamajin” so make of that what you will.
Do you have any books, Mr. Saunders?
Comment by Darryl Pearce — March 23, 2006 @ 2:03 pm
I bought my copy three weeks ago, should be here tomorrow. (I’ve already checked todays mail and got e-mail conformation yesterday)Have to disagree with you on that educated people know what’s right and anything less is wrong. All those people in Congress are educated, so is the Prez, VP et al. Rummy is educated so’s Wolfowitz. How about Buckley, Newt, Kristol, Rice they’re all educated. Some of the fore mentioned people are Liberals, some concervatives, some moderates, but they ALL gave a nod and a wink for this war.
Me, I’m uneducated. I was uneducated when I was in the Army Infanrty(Stratcom) during the Good Ole “V” War. I was uneducated when I was a commercial fisherman, and now I’m just as uneducated now herding horses, but I never (TRUTH) was for this war. I’ve felt and still believe Osama ought to be arrested and TRIED in a court of law as a common criminal. I’ve been done with all the waste of life and limb of war from way back when. Aparently the EDUCATED PEOPLE didn’t quite get their bellyfull of war when they had the chance, as I did. Of course their educated and I’m uneducated, their obviously right and I obviously wrong. Just to show you how Ignorant I can be, I’m thinking I ought to quit paying these people my hard earned TAXDOLLARS.
Comment by Mike Meyer — March 23, 2006 @ 4:34 pm
I’m afraid I’m one of those people that viewed both “Hell in a Handbasket” and “The Professors”. I’d read the remarks Pat Robertson made when Horowitz was promoting himself on Robertson’s show, so I decided to look up the book they mentioned. I suspect a lot of other left-minded folk did the same!
Oh, and I’m going to buy the book at his signing here in SF next week.
Comment by Dan Deparr — March 24, 2006 @ 4:00 am
the title of Tom’s book – Hell in a Handbasket – is spot on for the hellish fact that GLOBAL HEATING is here – the current issue of Science magazine (March 24) features new evidence that the ice sheets way up north and way down south are
madly melting
Comment by Lieutenant Breakfast — March 24, 2006 @ 7:25 am
I’m still eternally amused by Robertson’s comments about Horowitz’s subeject matter myself.
“Some of them are killers.”
Killers. Just ponder the word in the context of accusations of a teacher giving a student a lower grade for espousing a conservative view, or teaching only a liberal viewpoint. It’s like the inverse of me criticizing torture policies and then screaming AND THEY LITTER!
Comment by Esme — March 25, 2006 @ 10:03 am