A fully unbalanced, Manichean spin from the left on the icon of the right: vigorous, long and funny.
Heavily armed with evidence of the vaunted Fox broadcaster’s mendacious ineptitude, a pair of satirists depicts O’Reilly as a threat to the nation’s sanity.
Al Franken, of course, initiated the current art form of dissing right-wing megalomaniacs, and we hope he’s pleased. Franken acolytes Amann and Breuer gleefully assail O’Reilly; beat him soundly about the head and shoulders; and keep on kicking him when he’s down. They are relentless and can’t seem to stop belaboring the fun that began with a website (sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com). Though they couch it as an intervention (“Dear Bill, We’ve written this book because we care about you”), it’s mostly a sophomoric lark for liberals. Transcripts of his broadcasts and extracts from his books show O’Reilly, the perpetually outraged talking, ranting head, to be congenitally unfair and patently unbalanced. According to this indictment, he’s a finger-flipping moron, a feces-tossing sociopath and a runway model for the straitjacket. The authors’ proofs include O’Reilly’s diatribes on the estate tax, his calls for national boycotts and his holy war against Hillary, the New York Times and all the evil elite. O’Reilly isn’t above phony citations (Amann and Breuer follow his lead with their own bootless footnotes) or claiming that Hitler would have joined the ACLU. The authors examine these nuggets of nuttiness, including the splenetic loon’s written works. Not scanted, naturally, is Bill’s phone-sex escapade. Based on his take on how Katrina should have been handled, Amann and Breuer briefly imagine O’Reilly as president. They call him everything but a poopy-head in this total takeover of the get-O’Reilly franchise. Though unlikely to provoke general riots, the book may well spark a feisty reaction from the no-spin Irishman. The authors append a list of organizations that deserve contributions for having provoked Bill’s ire and the script of “Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O’Reilly: The Musical.”
A fully unbalanced, Manichean spin from the left on the icon of the right: vigorous, long and funny.Pub Date: May 10, 2006
ISBN: 1-56025-881-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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