A New American Tea Party

Despite being a Liberal, I approached John O’Hara’s book A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes with an open mind. In his interview, O’Hara seemed intelligent and reasonable, and I thought that his book could perhaps allow me to see what the tea party movement was striving to be before the crazy latched on.

For about the first third of the book, O’Hara gave me what I was looking for: he shared the history of the development of the tea party, explaining where they were coming from, with only a few snarky comments about the Democrats and Liberals. Though I didn’t agree with much of what O’Hara was saying, I could understand where he was coming from. And then he made the switch from recounting tea party history to bashing the media, President Obama, unions, and health care. The occasional anti-liberal joke expanded into mean-spirited rants, and all of a sudden A New American Tea Party was reading like every other political book. And that’s not a good thing.

Pardon me, while I break into this review to go on a little rant of my own about how much I hate political books. I hate them! The authors of these books—whether Democrat or Republic, Liberal or Conservative – talk about all the great things that their party does and all the terrible things the other guys do, and they back it up with facts. The trouble is, people on the other end of the political spectrum believe the complete opposite, and they have facts to back it up too. As a reader, this leaves me with nothing I can believe. I can’t trust the political writer because I know they will never say anything bad about their own party or anything good about their opponents, despite the fact that both sides have good and bad ideas, good and bad supporters. And that is why I hate political books. Now back to the review.

O’Hara is not a bad writer. He varies his sentence structure (and length), transitions adeptly, and spends a reasonable amount of time on each subject. But his book made me mad, and I didn’t enjoy reading it. It gets a 2/5.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with John O’Hara Part 1 Part 2

Buy the book

Things may slow down here at the Daily Shill over the next several months. I just started grad school this week, so I’ll be spending less time on my mission. But I’ll keep chipping away at this and try to make at least 4 reviews a month.

Courting Disaster

I am not going to be able to review this book fairly. I am a liberal person, and Mark Thiessen’s book Courting Disaster goes against much of what I believe in. I was unable to approach it with an open mind, so I know this post will be biased. But I read the book (except for the appendices—I had to stop somewhere), and here’s my take on in.

Courting Disaster makes three general arguments. 1. Waterboarding (and other types of “enhanced interrogation”) is not torture. 2. Guantanamo Bay is a wonderful prison. 3. Obama is inviting and encouraging terrorists to attack by not allowing the CIA to waterboard and by closing Guantanamo.

Thiessen has a distinct style for proving his points. Here’s my interpretation. “Waterboarding isn’t torture. You want to know why it isn’t torture? Let me tell you about all these other gruesome torture techniques that have been used in the past. Then I dare you to tell me waterboarding is torture.” And then he spends pages describing torture. It’s the same with Guantanamo. (Again, my version of his words), “Life in Guantanamo is just great for all the terrorists there. You want to hear about bad prison life? Let me tell you about some other prisons. Then you’ll see Guantanamo is the Ritz of prisons.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to be reading about torture and terrible prison life. And then there was Thiessen’s tone. It came across so snotty, almost like he’d be pleased if terrorists attacked during Obama’s administration, just so he could blame Obama for not torturing captured terrorists to gain information that could’ve stopped the attack.

The thing about Courting Disaster, though, is that people who don’t agree with Thiessen (aside from crazy people like me who belong to the Jon Stewart Book Club) are not going to read his book. The people who are going to buy it already agree with what Thiessen is arguing and will believe everything he says. And the few who read it who disagree will believe nothing he says.

This is the problem with books written with a strong political slant. Whether I’m reading one that is heavily liberal or conservative, I question the reliability of what I read. So, rather than reading a book arguing for waterboarding written by Donald Rumsfeld’s former speechwriter, I’d want to read one written by a member of the CIA who actually used these forms of “enhanced interrogation.” Sure, he’d probably have many, if not all, of the arguments that Thiessen has, but it would be a more reliable source.

I give Courting Disaster a 1/5. But, like I said, it’s probably not a fair rating. So if you want to, read the book. Make up your own mind about it.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Mark Thiessen (I’m linking to the version that aired, but there is a longer cut on the daily show website)

Buy the Book.