Today's Featured Book:
Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber
by Andy Borowitz
Genre: Nonfiction
Published: September 13, 2022
Page Count: 313 pages
Summary:
Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column “The Borowitz Report.” Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he delivers “a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of American politics from grounds for gravitas to festival of idiocy” (The New York Times).
Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.
Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.
Imagine a hypothetical job applicant. He can’t spell the simplest words, such as “heal” and “tap.” Confused by geography, he thinks there’s an African country called “Nambia.” As for American history, he’s under the impression that Andrew Jackson, who died in 1845, was angry about the Civil War, and that Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895, is still alive.
Given the alarming state of his knowledge, you might wonder what job he could get. Unfortunately, he’s not hypothetical, and the job he got, in 2016, was president of the United States.
Borowitz, Andy. Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, p. 1. Kindle Edition.
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The man who would become George H. W. Bush’s running mate was born James Danforth Quayle in 1947, the grandson of the Midwestern newspaper magnate Eugene C. Pulliam. “Life has been very good to me,” Quayle said. “I never had to worry about where I was going to go.” One place young Danny Quayle never seemed worried about going to was class. Years later, he revealed that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was his favorite movie because “it reminded me of my time in school.”
Borowitz, Andy. Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, p. 56. Kindle Edition.
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I could not stop reading this book. Page after page I read unbelievable-except-that-they-are-true stories about people who have been elected to lead our country. And many of these politicians attended some of America's most prestigious universities and law schools. Most of these politicians are my contemporaries in age. Oh my goodness. Do we need to devise some tests for these folks before they are allowed to run our country?
All is told with humor, so I didn't cry through the book, thank goodness. But it was published before you-know-who was reelected and the sequel, we have seen, is much, much more stupid than the original series. This book must be updated.
My favorite quote from the book:
"In a 2017 meeting with two Presbyterian pastors, he (Trump) seemed confused about whether Presbyterians were Christians. Incidentally, he was raised Presbyterian."
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When writing reviews, do you align your text to the left, center, right, or justify it? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)
Hmmm...At various times, I have done all of these.
