KeepHip.com

"Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance."

I don't think I'll buy the book, but I do like the title.

"Quote of the Day" doesn't quite cut it. It's more like "OMFG what planet am I on?". Check out this excerpt from Mark Thiessen's book:

Obama claims that by eliminating enhanced interrogations and closing Guantanamo, he is actually making America safer. In his view, both the CIA program and Guantanamo have driven the Muslim street into the enemy's camp and helped al Qaeda recruit new terrorists. As Obama put it ... "[I]nstead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause."

This is demonstrably false. First, the terrorists were successfully recruiting suicide operatives long before the CIA interrogation program existed or there were any terrorists held at Guantanamo. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when terrorists first tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they attacked the USS Cole. And there was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program on September 11, 2001. The terrorists found other excuses to recruit the operatives for these attacks. Evil always finds an excuse.

This is a dumb rebuttal. Obama claims Guantanamo helped to recruit more terrorists and all Thiessen's got is that terrorists existed before Guantanamo, therefore Guantanamo didn't create terrorism. How observant!

Remember, this guy just got a job as an op-ed columnist for the friggin' Washington Post! Let me say that if this guy were black somebody on the right would be screaming about how terrible Affirmative Action is.

Now here's the money quote, watch Thiessen prove he doesn't deserve to have a job:

In the movie Batman: The Dark Knight, whenever the Joker is about to kill one of his victims, he points to the scars that form his hideous smile and tells the story of how he got his disfiguring wounds. Each time it is a different story. The first time he says they were carved into his face by an abusive father. The next time, he claims he did it to himself after criminals disfigured his wife. But when he says to Batman, "Do you know how I got these scars?" Batman says, "No, but I know how you got these," and pushes him off the side of a building. Batman is not interested in the villain's made-up excuses. We shouldn't be, either.

Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Ta-Nehisi Coates and a bunch of other liberal bloggers have compiled a top 10 list of books that influenced their thinking.

Every single one of those books looks boring as hell.

Yglesias's quote from Alan Wolfe's review of Intellectuals and Society (previously) was well worth reading, but I think there's a more enlightening one to be found:

The more interesting question is how Sowell managed the task of actually writing the thing. Even jeremiads should have their joys; there is something so wonderful about being a writer and a critic that delivering even bad news can be a source of unbearable pleasure. But Sowell takes no joy in anything he has to say: his tone is as dour and depressing as his conclusions. I understand that the man is a conservative, but can’t he crack a smile? Sowell is such a plodder that even sarcasm, conservatism’s reliable and sometimes amusing old ally, is beyond his reach.

This business of dreary writing escapes me. True, writing can be a torment. But then there is the payoff: the unexpected insight, the sly pun, the implication left dangling for the reader to run with. Did Sowell’s research assistants, one of whom has worked for him for two decades, ever hear him shout with joy? Did he ever run into a colleague’s office bursting with enthusiasm about a brilliant sentence that made a whole chapter hang together? I cannot believe it. There is no grandeur in Sowell’s words, no sign of human creativity, no dream or fantasy of immortality. Sowell writes as if called to grim duty. There are people out there who hate intellectuals. His vocation is to tell them why without ever disturbing their complacency. The example of his book certainly will give them no reason to feel otherwise.

I knew Sowell was a hack in his politics but this was a "known revelation" to me - something I'd sort of always known but never truly realized - he's a hack writer too.

Half the fun of this blog is trying to share an odd insight or trying be witty: witness the double entendre in the lyrics quotes in this post's title. I giggled at my own joke, as I often do. Maybe my joke sucks, but as least I'm trying. Any writer worth reading should at least put forth that effort.

They're still not paying us, but . . .

Soon enough, they'll pay YOU:

Sarah Palin's book is so popular, they're giving it away, for free!

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE

In 'Going Rogue' Sarah Palin opens up for the first time about the 2008 presidential race with her view of high-stakes national politics—from patriots dedicated to "Country First" to slick politicos bent on winning at any cost. Subscribe to a year of Townhall Magazine for $34.95 and receive Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE

I've thoroughly enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's books, and I expect to enjoy the next one too, even though TIME's preview/excerpt of it looks to be a major change of pace:

[T]he question, before you whip out your credit card or start reciting your personal list of affirmations, is: What makes you think unsullied optimism is such a good idea? Americans have long prided themselves on being "positive" and optimistic — traits that reached a manic zenith in the early years of this millennium. Iraq would be a cakewalk! The Dow would reach 36,000! Housing prices could never decline! Optimism was not only patriotic, it was a Christian virtue, or so we learned from the proliferating preachers of the "prosperity gospel," whose God wants to "prosper" you. In 2006, the runaway bestseller The Secret promised that you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to "attract" it. The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world.

I have to laugh at Michelle Malkin's bitching about her and her ilk not getting enough media attention for their books. Conservatives claim the public loves their books, when in reality they practically have to give them away.

Yes, it's just a meaningless anecdote, but I've seen lots of people reading Michael Moore's books, versus one person, ever, reading Liberal Fascism. Yeah, that means I've never seen anyone on the bus or train reading a Jerome Corsi, Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter book. I have to wonder how many of these conservative books are printed and head straight to the landfill, considering that 34 percent of conservatives have not read a book within the past year.

I hope and pray to gods I don't believe in that it's a flop:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has agreed to a three-book deal with Crown Publishers, starting with a memoir about her years in the administration of President George W. Bush.

"Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America's top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009," according to a statement issued Sunday by Crown, a division of Random House Inc. Crown also published then-Sen. Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

Rice's book is planned for 2011.

The deal is worth at least $2.5 million, according to two publishing officials with knowledge of the negotiations. The officials asked not to be identified, citing the confidentiality of the talks.

I can't wait to buy Ann Coulter's new book.