Category Archives: Books

Taibbi Takes Down Friedman (Again)

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Writer Matt Taibbi provides another hilarious takedown of a Tom Friedman book, this time skewering the mustachioed moron’s latest effort, “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” Friedman’s hypocrisy and obtuseness are given ample space, but the best lines engage the billionaire New York Times columnist’s raging malapropisms.

 

(Taibbi summed up Friedman as follows while eviscerating his previous book, “The World Is Flat”:

[Friedman] has an anti-ear, and it’s absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.)

This time, it’s even easier for Taibbi:

My initial answer to that is that Friedman’s language choices over the years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out. Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn’t actually do anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind it’s highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked.

J.D. Smith, “The Best Mariachi in the World”

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FLYMF contributor J.D. Smith has penned a children’s book, “The Best Mariachi in the World.” The story, illustrated by Dani Jones, is summed up as follows:

Everyone in Gustavo’s family is in a mariachi band . . .

Everyone except Gustavo, that is. They all play violines, trompetas and guitarrones. They all make wonderful music in restaurants and at wedding parties. Gustavo would love to join the band, but he can’t play any of the instruments. What’s a wannabe mariachi to do? Follow Gustavo as he finds his place in the family mariachi band.

On his Amazon blog, J.D. relates that he wrote the book 10 years ago while on his morning commute (luckily for the pedestrians who might otherwise have been mauled, Smith lives in Washington D.C., which has an excellent public transit system). The book is available in English, Spanish, and bilingual versions, making it a perfect gift for young ones interested in some language-bending. Check it out today!

J.D.’s work for FLYMF includes The Great Tuvalu Liquidation Sale and…uh, other titles that aren’t entirely fitting to be associated with a children’s book. But you can visit our contributor’s archive and browse down to find them yourself.

Recent Reads from the New Yorker

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Some highlights from the past couple months of the world’s greatest magazine.

Lipstick on a Pig: a 2008 Campaign Quiz is the latest in a series of questionnaires Paul Slansky has produced to highlight the absurdity of election quotes. Test how good you are at identifying how low candidates and spokespeople will go. A hint: the real answers are generally the most outrageous.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, by Jill Lepore, explores how the practice of voting has changed in America since its inception. Many things we take for granted, from government-produced ballots to the secrecy of the voting curtain, are actually relatively recent developments.

Right Again, by Adam Gopnik, profiles the almost-saintly foresight and advocacy of John Stuart Mill. A dedicated feminist and champion of human rights, Mill’s positions still sound radical, and persuasive, today.

Finally, Aleksandar Hemon produces another punchy, evocative short story with The Noble Truths of Suffering. This one will especially resonate for writers, as it explores the way experiences are absorbed and then pulverized before being reframed on the printed page. Humor anchors a seemingly tossed-off, but surprisingly moving, story.

David Foster Wallace

Books

I’m not overly familiar with the work of David Foster Wallace, although I did appreciate the piece he wrote for the Atlantic on the American Idea. With his suicide, though, have come a number of appreciations on the Internet, and one of these led me to the following commencement speech by Wallace. It’s well worth reading.

Here’s an excerpt dealing with what I like to call “the bookkeeping”:

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

I Love Roger Ebert

Books, Movies, ,

The list of reasons for loving Roger Ebert is long and enduring. The man has introduced millions of readers and viewers to the pleasure of good movies. He wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer’s trash classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

He encouraged Oprah Winfrey to pursue syndication—while the two were out on a date!—contributing to her powerhouse status. He has been inspirational in continuing to pursue the career he loves, despite serious health problems, ones that have robbed him of his ability to speak.

And he wrote perhaps the best takedown in film review history, eviscerating Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo. (Although it should be noted that Rob Schneider cemented his mensch status by sending Ebert flowers when the film reviewer fell ill.)

So what’s the latest evidence of Roger Ebert being the coolest guy in Chicago? His kiss-off letter to Jay Mariotti, who recently ended his love-hate relationship with Chicago sportsfans by dumping on the Chicago Sun-Times as he walked out the door.

Ebert’s response, published in an open letter at Poynter Online:

Dear Jay,

What an ugly way to leave the Sun-Times. It does not speak well for you. Your timing was exquisite. You signed a new contract, waited until days after the newspaper had paid for your trip to Beijing at great cost, and then resigned with only an e-mail. You saved your
explanation for a local television station.

As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that. You owed us decency. The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat.

Newspapers are not dead, Jay, although you predicted the death of the Sun-Times and the Tribune. Neither paper will die any time soon. Job-hunting tip: It is imprudent to go on TV and predict the collapse of a newspaper you might hope would hire you. Times are hard in the newspaper business, and for the economy as a whole. Did you only sign on for the luxury cruise? There’s an old saying that you might have come across once or twice on the sports beat: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Newspapers are not dead, Jay, because there are still readers who want the whole story, not a sound bite. If you only work on television, viewers may get a little weary of you shouting at them. You were a great shouter in print, that’s for sure, stomping your feet when owners, coaches, players and fans didn’t agree with you. It was an entertaining show. Good luck getting one of your 1,000-word rants on the air.

The rest of us are still at work, still putting out the best paper we can. We believe in our profession, and in the future. And we believe in our internet site, which you also whacked as you slithered out the door. I don’t know how your column was doing, but we have the most popular sports section in Chicago. The reports and blog entries by our Washington editor Lynn Sweet have become a must-stop for millions of Americans in this election year. After a recent blog entry I wrote about the Beijing Olympics, I woke up at 5 a.m. one morning, when North America was asleep, and found that 40 percent of my 100 most
recent visitors had been from China. I don’t have any complaints about our web site. So far this month my web page has been visited from virtually every country on earth, including one visit from the Vatican City. The Pope, no doubt.

You have left us, Jay, at a time when the newspaper is once again in the hands of people who love newspapers and love producing them. You managed to stay here through the dark days of the thieves Conrad Black and David Radler. The paper lost millions. Incredibly, we are still paying Black’s legal fees.

I started here when Marshall Field and Jim Hoge were running the paper. I stayed through the Rupert Murdoch regime. I was asked, “How can you work for a Murdoch paper?” My reply was: “It’s not his paper. It’s my paper. He only owns it.” That’s the way I’ve always felt about the Sun-Times, and I still do. On your way out, don’t let the door bang you on the ass.

Your former colleague,
Roger Ebert