by Joe Buffaloe
Daily Lobo
It's easy to complain about politicians.
Nowhere is this easier to discern than at a bookstore. The amount of political books representing the extreme right and the extreme left would almost lead you to believe the majority of Americans vote.
The trouble with most of these books is their asinine, if-only-everyone-in-the-world-were-as-smart-as-me tone. While a book worth its environmental cost in paper tends to be informative or insightful, most political books are nothing but a monument to the author's ego. And at their worst, they trivialize serious issues.
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Take Bull$#*! Artist: The 9/11 Leadership Myth, for example. It's possible author Ron Schalow has some valid arguments against George Bush, but if so, they're buried under a mountain of sarcasm and cynicism.
The framework for the book seems interesting at first - a minute-by-minute report on what the president did during the 102 minutes our nation was under attack in 2001, plus an exposure of the lies he told in the aftermath. A talented author could have strung this together into a complex, detailed and coherent story. More importantly, he could have used his research to provide the world with an important historical account.
Instead, Schalow writes for those of us whose attention span has a maximum of three seconds. The layout on each page reminds me of The Magic School Bus - no large blocks of text, lots of pictures, lots of captions, easy for 8-year-olds to read.
But 8-year-olds aren't reading political books about one of the most important days of our time. Such books should be written for those with an earnest desire to find the truth. And people looking for a cheap laugh at Bush's expense already have plenty of places to turn - there was no need to render this subject as a page-stretching, space-wasting joke.
The few words Schalow deigns to put on the page would have been better left unsaid. Imagine The Magic School Bus again. Say the teacher, Ms. Frizzle, fell into a volcano and melted in the middle of the book. Were Schalow writing, he would have made a joke, something along the lines of "Frizzle? More like fried."
This is essentially what he does to the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. Rather than approach this subject with the proper gravity, he uses it as material for sarcastic humor aimed at Bush. Worse still, he's not funny. And he repeats the same jokes over and over again.
I don't see why he's analyzing Bush's actions on Sept. 11 anyway. What's important is fighting the serious problems that have come as a result of the attacks. We need serious, intelligent, nonpartisan people to fight assaults on the Constitution like the Patriot Act, or to expose U.S.-run torture camps around the world, as a CIA officer recently did at the cost of her job.
Yes, Bush has lied more times than can be counted. So does every politician. Bickering about such petty issues distracts us from important matters. We don't have time for trivia like this book.
Bull$#*! Artist: The Sept. 11 Leadership Myth
by Ron Schalow
Grade: D-
