Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season
by Matt Taibbi
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An up-close look at the democratic race for the White House-it isn't pretty Spanking the Donkey is a campaign diary like no other. Celebrated reporter Matt Taibbi turns a withering eye on the kissing contest of puffed-up martinets and egomaniacal fantasists more generally known as the 2004 Democratic primaries. Taibbi's contempt for the whole charade, and for most of those involved (including a generous helping of his fellow journalists), makes for a searing and highly entertaining account. show more His refusal to take the proceedings seriously leads him to volunteer for Wesley Clark's New Hampshire campaign in the guise of an adult-film director, while his take on a John Edwards press conference in New York City is filtered through the haze of hallucinogenic drugs. Taking up residence in slums and halfway houses as he follows the circus around the country, Taibbi juxtaposes an idiotic dog-and-pony show in which clashes of plainly identical candidates are presented as real controversies, with the quite separate concerns of the ordinary Americans whose lodgings he shares. The gap between the antiseptic exercise in faint patriotic optimism that is mainstream politics and the harsh realities of life for the millions of Americans that the electoral parade simply passes by has never been more sharply, or hilariously, sketched. show lessTags
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One of the 2 copies is an uncorrected proof. Both signed.
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17+ Works 3,507 Members
Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a columnist for RollingStone.com. He is the author of The Great Derangement, Spanking the Donkey,Smells Like Dead Elephants, and The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. (Bowker Author Biography)
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 324.9730931 — Society, government, & culture Political science Politics & Elections Biography And History North America United States 21st Century
- LCC
- E905 .T35 — History of the United States George W. Bush's administrations, 2001-2009
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