Gawd knows if these two tomes have yet reached the Los Angeles Public Library, but they've certainly reached the reviewers @ the L. A. Times. (Therefore we'll leave it to the Timesfolk to review them.)
Corruption abounds. The U.S. secretary of the Interior is giving no-bid contracts for oil, coal and timber on public land to the president's corporate campaign contributors in secret meetings. Big Oil not only writes energy policy but also dictates military options and environmental priorities, this last mainly by dismantling protections enacted by previous presidents. The U.S. attorney general signs off on whatever comes his way, putting the administration's friends above the law. The FBI looks the other way. The president may not understand what it all means, but it's unclear whether he would disapprove if he did.
What year is it? Here are a few more hints: The president's security detail shuttles concubines in and out of the White House and delivers payoffs to former mistresses to keep them quiet. His wife consults a psychic daily and punishes petty slights with the help of government agencies. Vocal upholders of public morals keep their gay lovers in Washington and their wives back home.
Still guessing? Turns out it's 1922, not 2001-2008 or anytime during the Reagan era, as evidenced in a book about the
Teapot Dome scandal.
Also:
The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby. Pantheon: 362 pp., $26
Merely as a pseudo-intellectual, we at Just Another Blog™ are outraged by what Mme. Jacoby has to say about you wilfully ignorant bastards & the future you promise us:
"a surge of anti-intellectualism capable of inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics."
As
reviewed by Art Winslow, some sort of intellectual elitist who used to write for
The Nation, fer crissake.
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