Of Thee I Zing: America’s Cultural Decline from Muffin Tops to Body Shots by Laura Ingraham
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Ok, friends, don’t hate me for the fact that I somehow ended up taking this book home from the library, (this book which, I discovered only after having gotten it home, is authored by a “frequent guest of the O’Reilly Factor.”) What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn’t I have been able to tell from the cover that the person doing the zing-ing is a conservative? (I’m drunk on the awesome library system where I now live, and on the fact that I can take. books. home. for. free. You can’t blame me, really.)
But then, I thought to myself, “maybe it will be good for you to read something from the opposite point of view.” Isn’t that good for our brains and our human development, to try to at least *listen* to opposing viewpoints from our own, from time to time? (Chris and I often do this in the car when the radio inevitably lands on some ranter, but we usually end up cracking up and doing imitations of the offending hosts.)
So, trying to be open-minded, I gave it a chance. And at first, I chuckled at bit. The author’s observations about excessive parents who compete over who can host the most elaborate birthday parties seemed pretty spot on.
But then I kept going, and I realized that, rather than these being essays poking fun at contemporary culture, the entries were actually just section after section of stuff to bitch about, or “wonder aloud” about, in a very old-guy-in-the-coffee-group kind of way. (“Now, about tattoos..what’s wrong with these kids today?”)
After all the mini-sections on things like, yes, tattoos, text-ing teenagers, obese people at the mall, people who write their own wedding vows, people who carry their babies in cloth carries, and on and on and on, I couldn’t help but return to one of my favorite TV bits of all time: Cliff Claven trying his hand at stand-up comedy on Cheers. (Enter subject matter here, then follow with, “What’s up with that?”)
So, regardless of her political affiliation, I thought she came off like a fuddy-duddy, a judge-y tsk-tsk-er, and a crank.
Tags: American, columns, non-fiction, politics, Rural People Read Too
So you never took advantage of interlibrary loan while working at the university? If so, that’s a shame. That’s a perk I use a LOT as an employee :)
Oh, I did! But mostly for graduate-school texts. Somehow less exciting…