I have really enjoyed reading Going Rogue. In much the same way I enjoyed high school. It was instructive and a bit bizarre and I wouldn’t want to do it again.

I wouldn’t wish such a reading experience on any of you. Because Sarah Palin is painfully naive, obtuse, and annoying. Even though this memoir was certainly heavily edited, if not completely ghostwritten, there is no escaping Sarah’s charm. Charm like a sandpaper turd.

What I have enjoyed most about reading this book is telling people that I am reading it and quoting from it: “We had turned the idea of commercializing our natural gas for Alaska’s economic future from pipe dream to pipeline.”

Yee haw!

And am I the only one who knows what rogue means???

1 : VAGRANT, TRAMP

2 : a dishonest or worthless person : SCOUNDREL

3 : a mischievous person : SCAMP

4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave

5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

So sure, Sarah, you go rogue. Go real rogue.

Our concern with Sarah Palin is that she is clearly not going away anytime soon. A Ross Perot she is not. She confirms this in her Acknowledgments: “Next time, the focus will not be on me.”

Next time?!?!???

Focus will not be on you? Good luck.

Because Sarah Palin spends 403 pages ranting and raving about publicity, unwanted attention, smear campaigns, ethics inquiries, freedom of information requests, invasion of privacy, and then once she retires as Governor of Alaska, observes this: “We did not expect the wall-to-wall national coverage that exploded over the next week.”

Really?

Be honest.

Tell me the truth.

You really didn’t expect that?

Okay, well then you’re an idiot, Sarah Palin.

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Much has been said about Barack Obama.

Much has been said about Barack Obama and the books he reads.

Much has been said about Barack Obama reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.”

Much has been said about the similarities between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln.

And for good reason. While I am only on page 11 of Team of Rivals, I have already noted the following:

(and seriously, I swear to god, I am not simply reading this book because it is now in the news, I have owned it for some time now, having snagged a hardcover first edition for 10 dollars during a bargain sale at Barnes & Borderzon.)

Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were both nominated by their party to be presidential candidates above considerable odds and the presence of much more prominent, formidable opponents.

They were both from the state of Illinois.

Lincoln’s only elected experience was a single term as Representative. Obama’s only experience was a single term as Senator.

They both chose a former opponent as Secretary of State.

Which is all great. Lincoln was a great President. And Obama is proving to be one.

But here’s my problem:

Abraham Lincoln was shot.

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“This is our country, too, and we can goddam well control it if we learn to use the tools.” – Hunter S. Thompson, 1969

With the economy in shambles, financial books are finding a lucrative market.

With Barack Obama winning the election, his books see another bump in sales.

The rest of us drank a little bubbly last night and treated our dogs to a George the Lame Duck chew toy.

It was divine.

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A lot has been said about Sarah Palin since she was tapped, like that last keg of old PBR that no one wanted to drink but would if we got desperate and times got tough, to be John McCain’s running mate.

And a lot has been said about her since then.

But what has not been covered by the liberal mainstream media are the rumors that have been writhing around John McCain like maggots that spontaneously generated from him after being left out and exposed to the elements for too long. They certainly didn’t hatch from the eggs left by flies and they certainly didn’t evolve. This is the McCain/Palin campaign we’re talking about here.

These rumors are something that only a select few can confidently corroborate: that Sarah Palin is in the throes of a severe addiction to Salvia divinorum.

Salvia is an intense psychoactive that causes hallucinations. While currently legal, lawmakers across the country have recently been calling for Salvia’s criminalization.

All the surefire signs of a serious Salvia habit are frighteningly present in Sarah Palin: A bubbly yet detached demeanor. A glassy, distant gaze. Stuttering, stammering, restarting sentences and failing to complete thoughts. A smirking, goofy grin. Onset of a slow drawl as the active constituent, trans-neoclerodane diterpenoid, interferes with the k-Opioid receptor. An inability to focus, especially on direct questions, such as, “What newspapers do you read?”

America, you don’t read when you’re high on Salvia! You’re too busy having a philosophical argument with your Ego in a bright white room. And then you army crawl into the kitchen and look out the window at Russia.

There have also been rumors that even Tina Fey smoked Salvia in order to prepare for her spoof of Palin on Saturday Night Live. But smoking Salvia results in only a few minutes of an altered state. Palin is clearly a chewer, whose effects last much, much longer.

But remember, My Fair Country, however you feel about this country’s state after these past eight years, remember that it was presided over by a sober man.

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Well, it’s finally here: Banned Book Week.

Sponsored by the American Library Association, Banned Book Week is observed this year from September 27th to October 4th. And while Banned Book Week probably falls somewhere beyond Grandma’s Birthday and Flag Day on the Degree of Celebration Scale, I am reading Bless Me, Ultima in order to partake in the festivities.

Because this isn’t really about banned books, which seem quaint and harmless. It’s about censorship and 1st Amendment Rights and free speech, which strike a far more resonant cord in freedom-loving folk.

In commemoration of Banned Book Week, Time has assembled a nice slide show of the most challenged books of all times:

Squares beware.

Banned Book Week does not currently have the celebratory, festive tradition of a Christmas or Thanksgiving or Fourth of July, but Authwhore thinks that the likes of Voltaire, Mark Twain, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, and Vladimir Nabokov should make for a really, really smashing good time.

So look for Banned Book Week party recommendations next year. Suggestions welcome and encouraged. We should strive for combining New Year’s Eve, Christmas, and Fourth of July in a week-long orgy akin to Carnival.

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While the meteorological and economic industries are facing the grim realities of their professions with hurricanes and financial crises, it is high time to be an armchair publishing quarterback. Because we suffer none of the detriment, we just read about it.

Right?

It is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday today, September 24th.

The Palin-bashing book bandwagon is proving to be ever crowded with each passing day.

Obama is of course left out in the warm with movements like Books4Barack.

Barney Rosset, editor of Grove Press, the publisher of authors such as William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller, will be the subject of a new documentary, Obscene. It’s already in my queue. I haven’t been this excited about a documentary since Helvetica.

Bret Easton Ellis, who is probably the greatest living American writer for my money, better than John Updike, Phillip Roth (whose movie adaptations are doomed), and whoever else, is heading to Broadway with a theatrical interpretation of “American Psycho.” Yes!

Big Brother, I mean Google, is expanding its Book Search capabilities by providing discounts at participating booksellers. So do you pronounce it kew-pawn or coo-pin?

And because the general public is just dying for more Melville, Hollywood will be giving us another adaptation of Moby Dick.

French author, Pierre Pean, is on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide.

And speaking of lawsuits, The Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association regional trade show held this past weekend in Colorado Springs, the association’s booth featured canvas messenger bags for sale bearing the motto “Reading is Sexy,” blatantly ripping off the brilliant intellectual property of some hack blog.

Which is almost as cruel and cheap as co-opting the title of a song by Sugarhill Gang for a blog post title.

Lazy and Depraved.

We should all be ashamed.

Filed under: Books, Movies, Politics, news
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Chuck Norris is set to release Black Belt Patriotism.  The book is, apparently, the Chuck Norris plan for getting the nation back on track.

At first I was skeptical that there would be a market for such a book, what with the flood of similar books on the market – written by any number of folks who might be better suited to present such lofty ideas.  Upon further reflection, I realized that Chuck Norris is as well experienced as our current president to speak on such matters.  He as acted like he is tough on crime, he has pretended to win wars and has simulated going after terrorists.  With consideration, I think this book will equal anything ghost written under George W. Bush’s name.

I will have to, at least, thumb through this roadmap of reform – if only to be sure there are chapters titled:

Judo Chop National Debt

Side Kick Pork Barrel Spending

Throw a Roundhouse Punch at the Welfare System

Give the National Budget a Total Body Work Out

For me, the rest of the book can be crap.  There had better some good leads, that is all I am hoping for…

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I am sure you have all been asking yourself “What happened to Scott?”

“Where is that Authwhore contributor that showed up for a few genius posts and then vanished?” must be on all of your lips, right after “What is up the Authwhore’s butt about the New Yorker?”

Well, perhaps I have been on summer vacation.  No, that is not true though I could damned well use about a week in a sensory deprivation chamber.  It is election season, which sends my away from the books ,typically, and on to obsessively reading newspapers and periodicals.  I suppose I could have come by here to spout off about some of that, but anyway…

I think I have become obsessed with macro-economics.  Not in any professional sense, but as a hobby, I suppose.  I went back to reread “Planet of Slums” by Mike Davis recently.  Oh man, I am pretty sure this was the book that sent me on my sabatical from Authwhore.  “Planet of Slums” may be the most depressing thing I have ever read.

Davis does a fine job of providing an overview of the mass movement of global populations into urban environments, the associated population growth and economic decline – as well as doling out a fairly detailed statistical analysis demonstrating that we are all pretty well screwed.  I don’t mean screwed like a slight-decline-in-financial-indicators – I mean screwed like Blade Runner-multiplied-by-Mad Max-but-without-the-humorous-parts-plus-some-Grapes of Wrath-screwed.  That kind of screwed, and with greater numbers of minorities than are included in any of those stories.

We all heard about China, thanks to the Olympic games.  There was some slight reportage on Beijing’s bit of super-slummage relocation, extreme polution and so on.  Beijing is a fine example of the economic and environmental factors that are driving folks, worldwide, into what Davis describes as “super-slums.”  Davis examines the motives of families in Africa abandoning rural communities to live on the fringes of cities, in the hopes of being able to pick enough string from the garbage heap their shacks get built upon so that they might resell it to other slum dwellers and feed the kids.

“Planet of Slums” is not a collection of grim and depressing anecdotes, though you do get plenty of those.  Rather, it is compelling examination of the varied machinations that are generating booming, unsupported, unregulated, masses of urban poverty around the globe.  Davis also explores the few possible, unlikely solutions to the crisis and details the causality that will prevent our pulling out of the nose dive.  Big, heavy, grim stuff.  Wildly depressing.

So, go read it.

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With the summer months waning, I’m sure we’re all feeling sentimental and nostalgic for the halcyon days of yore when one could come home and turn on the television to be entertained by athletes at the height of their powers engaged in vicious combat for the sake of their home land’s dignity and pride.

So Richard McGuire gave us “Swim, Swam, Swum,” a carefree and breezy image of individuals at a swimming pool.

Swim, Swam, Swum. Real clever. About as clever as Night Cap.

But it is of a swimming pool. Which is topical I suppose, with the Olympics having just drawn safely to a close with a minimal amount of fatal stabbings.

So forget the Olympics. Forget about the Democratic National Convention (if you even thought about it in the first place). Forget about the wars, the strife, the famine, the struggle, and the crises.

And instead take a cool, refreshing dip in the New Yorker’s belligerent refusal to engage in social commentary by providing relevant and provocative covers on their magazine.

Rouse the rabble!

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The “artwork” is by J.J. Sempe, a New Yorker contributor since 1978, and is called “Future Memories.”

Future Memories. Yeah, of false nostalgia blotted with sentimental Thomas-Kincade idealism. The image shows two adults roasting what can only be marshmallows over a campfire on a beach as seventeen ankle biters sit around enraptured by the fire’s glow and the sky’s sparkling expanse.

But certainly there will also be future memories of the bugs, the smell, the noise, the homesickness, the bad food, the annoying kids, the bed wetter, the crier, the stealer, the itches, the sickness, the sweat, and the discomfort.

At a time of war, grave athletic duels, and economic crises, I cannot fathom why such a distinguished publication as The New Yorker would resort to such escapist fantasy.

Is this what we want our children exposed to?

The ostriches at The New Yorker predictably resorted to a Frenchman for this drivel.

J.J. Sempe, born in the disreputable and ramshackle town of Bordeaux, is the author of “Sempe: A Little Bit of France.”

Buy it and the terrorists win.

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