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| Home > Reviews > 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37) |
| 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37) | | Date Created: Aug 14, 2005, 01:13 PM |
 Although worth reading, particularly for some of the influential flaming far-left liberals I didn't know about, there are some problems with 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg.
Bernie's previous books, Bias and Arrogance, are more important, better written, and just better. Read Bias first. I can see how 100 People got started. It sounds like a good idea, fairly easy to do, and a bit of fun since Goldberg has been ostracized by the MSM, the liberal elite, and many of his previous friends. He might as well go hog-wild. He even damns a few of his old media friends in the list of 100. Unfortunately, sarcasm and finger pointing is hard to pull off without sounding like those you are castigating. Just ask Ann Coulter who does it better.
I agree with most of Goldberg's picks and I'm firmly out of the far-left liberal camp, but I'm not a conservative either and I couldn't help but applaud Bernie's quote of Tom Wolfe who supposedly said, "There is something in me that particularly wants it registered that I am not one of them." Goldberg was referring to the snobby, elitist attitude of liberals but it could be applied to conservatives too.
Interestingly, this time around, Goldberg got on some talk shows and got some MSM attention. I saw Matt Lauer interview him on the Matt and Katie show. There are some interviews with Goldberg that are worth checking out here and here.
As for who Goldberg picked for the top 100, he, himself, admits that it's just his opinion and that no one else would agree with all 100. The whole list can be found here on a liberal screed website. An interesting analysis of all 100 choices and Goldberg's themes can be found here.
For my taste there aren't enough plaintiff attorneys on the list although the section on John Edwards is worth quoting below. There are too many stand-fors and representative people like Latrell Sprewell (30) and Ludacris (60). Three spots are devoted to groups like "the dumb celebrity", "the vicious celebrity", and "the dumb and vicious celebrity" (no.'s 83-85). But then Tim Robbins (81) makes it along with Courtney Love (95). All in all, the list is rather celebrity and media weighted. OK, it was good to see Noam Chomsky (11) up there.
I think there should be more politicians on the list. Hard to believe that Jimmy Carter (6) made it but Bill Clinton didn't. Neither did Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Boxer. Paul Begala (27) made it but not James Carville. Of the rabid Bush-hater columnists, Paul Krugman (8) made it but not Maureen Dowd. There were some non-liberals on the list like Judge Roy Moore (21), Jimmy Swaggert (70), and Michael Savage (61). But some like Anna-Nicole Smith (53), Courtney Love (95), and Paris' parents (100), I thought were gratuitous.
"Screwing up America" is hard to define, but in terms of harm done and actually making a career out of it, John Edwards deserves to be way up on the list. Here's what Bernie had to say:
"...he's definitely the one who's brought some long-overdue attention to the way people like him do what they do: which is win enormous financial rewards by ignoring the facts to play on juries' emotions, and, in the process, do great damage to countless blameless medical practitioners and the patients they serve...And ultimately, all of us pay the price, both literally, and in the sense of living in a society where emotion increasingly trumps reason."
"...in the words of a former state court judge in North Carolina, "He [Edwards] has an ingratiating way, particularly with jurors and particularly with women on juries."
"There's just one problem: According to the overwhelming weight of evidence, the medical care in such cases has nothing to do with the fact that child is born with cerebral palsy...Then, again, a few inconvenient facts didn't even slow Edwards down, let alone stop him, any more than it's stopped him from claiming, over and over and over again, that in the courtroom he defended ordinary people against the interests of the powerful."
"'What is truly shameful is the way plaintiff's bar has used cerebral palsy to grow rich', as William Tucker put it...'Cerebral palsy is a condition for which no one is to blame. Yet the plaintiff's bar continues to ravage doctors and hospitals because that's where the money is...Malpractice suits over cerebral palsy are a cynical, unprincipled exploitation of nature's tragedies'...Strong, resourceful people understand that life can be hard, and it's not always fair, and when things go wrong, they don't point fingers. They deal with it. John Edwards, meanwhile, sues the Red Cross for unknowingly transmitting the AIDS virus through tainted blood products."
"...More important, Edward's law career -- both his reputation as a fighter for the 'little guy' and the fortune (and contacts) he made during those years -- have been the foundation of his political career. His campaigns overwhelmingly have been financed by trial lawyers who, in John Edwards, have a champion in the fight against meaningful reform of the legal system. And lawyers, just for the record, are now the largest contributors to the Democratic Party in general. And just as bad, Edwards hasn't hesitated to introduce his brand of smarmy emotionalism into the political arena either."
"The man is as cynically unscrupulous as they come, a latter-day two-bit snake-oil salesman. And for all his supposed respect for 'the little guy', John Edwards clearly believes the little guy is an idiot." |
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