A Greater Cynic Than I

I picked up Matt Taibbi's Spanking the Donkey because it was subtitled "Dispatches from the Dumb Season".  I was doing election reading as I was simultaneously reading Stephen King and Bentley Little in honor of the Halloween season.  It was a good choice, because I needed to be reading someone whose observations were even more jaded than mine.

I discovered Taibbi as he was leaving True/Slant.  I am a relatively new blogger, and just now beginning to be aware of the wealth of opinion that is out there.  But I live in a library, and I do read voraciously.  So, instead of checking out his current blog at "Rolling Stone", I immersed myself in Spanking the Donkey.

Many of the articles are from "Rolling Stone" and document Taibbi's growing depression and psychosis as he documents the 2004 election campaign.  We have two parties, and they are one.  We have a media that serves the parties.  Instead of sitting through yet more of the candidates' choreographed appearances, he slips off to the parts of town that the candidates never see, and interviews the residents.  He sneaks up on the candidates despite all attempts to shield them from awkward encounters.  At times he dons a gorilla suit, or dresses as a Viking.  He is as critical of the populist hero Howard Dean as he is of John Kerry as he is of George W. Bush as he is of the journalists who tag along eating campaign food and then, sated, submit their souls as well as their articles.

So if you're really, really tired of yet another election season, this is the book, and the writer, for you.