Topic: Book Review Of Meggie Mac's "Dirty, Sexy Politics" ...a must read

[trapeze]

Meggie Mac spent Tuesday evening on Twitter attempting, as only she can, to say something witty and clever about Mark Sanford's win in the SC special election. (She has since deleted her embarrassing tweets but Twitchy saved them for posterity and out of spite. Sadly, I am blocked from Meggie Mac's twitter feed due to several dozen tweets about fried chicken and gravy not being one of the major food groups.) She wasn't happy about Sanford winning and bleated on and on and on until...

Iowahawk destroyed her with this:

So...in honor of that epic tweet, this book review was posted on the AoS ONT:

On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity were as a matter of law not as culpable for their acts. Writing eloquently in dissent, Justice Scalia drew a sharp distinction between the severely mentally retarded (who are truly not responsible for their actions), and the merely stupid (the category into which Mr. Atkins undoubtedly fell). Scalia argued forcefully that, with respect to the merely stupid, at least sometimes they deserve to be punished for their antisocial and destructive behavior.

This article, of course, is not about capital punishment. It is a book review of Dirty, Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain. However, the above discussion is relevant because I initially had reservations about writing this book review at all. After all, it is clear to everyone who has read Meghan McCain’s twitter feed, her “articles” on The Daily Beast, or her ill-fated campaign blog that Meghan is not a paragon of clear reasoning, exemplar of familiarity with facts, nor a model of English language expertise. And after subjecting myself to 194 continuous pages of her “writing,” it became clear that none of the above-described works truly plumbed the depths of mental vacuity in which Ms. McCain aimlessly and cluelessly drifts.

This presented a dilemma.

It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot. This being a professional website for which I have a great deal of respect, I searched for a more eloquent or gentle way to accurately phrase the previous sentence – but could not find one.

This is the review that I wanted to write. But, because I couldn't bear the thought of parting with so much as a dime that might find it's way into Meggie Mac's chubby, fried-chicken-grease-stained-fingers, I never bought the wretched thing. This is a great review. It is certainly better than anything I could have written because the author is significantly better at grammar than I am. I don't pretend to be an expert on grammar but I do know good grammar when I see it and that's about as far as it goes. Of course, the grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes that this book is chock full of are but one aspect of its atrociousness. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

[Libertas]

"Each subsequent page of this book contains one grisly crime against the English language after another."

" That a graduate of Columbia University, as Ms. McCain purports to be, produced writing this shoddy is bad; that a publishing company let this authorial abortion go to print is an insult to the collective self-worth of our thinking nation."

"If you’re insulted right now that I’ve wasted your time and precious blog space block quoting that entire excerpt, imagine how I feel: I read the entire book."

"...a more candid admission would have gone something like, 'Where I needed a fact, I just made one up.' "

"Meghan’s real talent, however, is not in manufacturing facts, but rather in manufacturing enemies."

"McCain’s political prescriptions are the sections of the book that are perhaps the most vacuous and devoid of factual support in the entire book; and in the context of Dirty, Sexy Politics, that is an impressive feat indeed."

"Such substantial portions of Dirty, Sexy Politics are devoted to these and other unfounded delusions of persecution that a qualified practitioner could probably render a DSM-IV diagnosis on the basis of reading the book alone. However, when McCain turns from bemoaning the conspiracy to drum her out of the party to actual electoral prognostication, the wheels really come off the factual bus."

"On the whole, I am simply not a talented enough writer to express how truly horrible this book was. The last line of the book implores readers not to let Meghan “pick up this torch alone.” I can honestly say that I was encouraged throughout to pick up a torch in order to burn my copy of Dirty, Sexy Politics, even though I was reading it on a Kindle. There is no reason that anyone who is not getting paid to review this book should ever, ever spend money on it. If you simply must have large doses of poorly-written fictional tripe written by a narcissistic person who hates conservatives and everything they stand for, read Mike Lupica instead. At least he’s smart enough to know which side he’s on."

Now that is what I call a damn fine morning read!  And I will disgree with you on just one point Mr. Wolf - you are a talented enough writer!

 

[Alphabet Soup]

"That's not writing, that's typing." - Truman Capote