After Checkers, to the cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon, congratulating yourself for seeing through Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker bluffs with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel of a political identity… Four o’clock EST, this Sunday, we discuss the first two chapters of Nixonland.: the Rise of A …
Books
NIXONLAND: Official Book Group Invitation
First online ‘meeting’ of the BJ Book Group will start at 4pm EST Sunday, January 30th. The book, of course, is Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. If you own an e-reader (are an e-reader?), commentor RSR pointed out that an “enhanced” e-book with CBS news footage is available through publishers Simon & Shuster. Now that I’ve pored …
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Book Group: NIXONLAND’s the One
Nixon had a rough childhood, poor and wretched. Some people would say “I don’t want anyone to go through that” and become a liberal. Some people say ” it’s okay with me if others suffer so I won’t” and that’s a modern Republican. Some people say “There will be suffering and I’m the one dishing …
Book Club Thoughts
I don’t know if any decision has been made about Nixonland, but I can assure you that I would rather shower in prison than spend a minute reading or discussing anything written by Ayn Rand. I just bought copies of Griftopia and The Great Derangement from Amazon (as well as Tom Tomorrow’s Too Much Crazy …
Late Night Open Thread: Nixonland
If there’s going to be a Balloon Juice Book Club, commentor Catclub suggests, then Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland might be a good place to start. I’ll admit that I’ve been avoiding this worthy tome (I did read various excerpts when it first appeared) because it’s 900 pages of stuff I didn’t enjoy living through, and which …
Huckleberry Finn: “Slave,” “Nigger,” “The N Word,” and The Daily Show
“Who could be offended at the Adventures of Huckleberry Turtle and Nigger Rabbit?” Last night, The Daily Show took on the Huck Finn controversy, and the whitewashing of our history which, as I mentioned last week in connection with the failed reading of the Constitution, is merely an attempt to make white folks comfortable with …
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Open Thread: Retreat to the Library
“Modesty did not come naturally to her; she seemed to have a knack for drawing attention to herself, a characteristic that went largely unnoticed in a family of spirited exhibitionists. No one took the trouble to put her in her place.” Online reading has greatly damaged my ability to focus on anything as demanding as …