The Wacko's Book Club

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist


A couple of infamous tea-baggers have made the news lately with references to books they have read, and while I am doubtful that either of these ladies have read anything more substantive than than a small romance novel or micro-wave instructions, I will give them the benefit of a doubt for purposes of ridicule.

First up is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a welfare queen who does quite nicely off of her personal farm subsidies but doesn't want the hungry poor to receive any unemployment insurance.  Ms. Bachmann recently admitted that she used to be a Democrat, but changed political party affiliation to the GOP after reading Gore Vidal's Burr.  I, too, have read this account of our third Vice-President - and liked it.  But there was nothing in Mr. Vidal's presentation of the traitorous Aaron Burr that would make me want to become a Republican.

What message did Ms. Bachmann get from this biography of Aaron Burr?   Did she believe that his effort to steal the Presidential election from Thomas Jefferson was some sort of precursor of Bush v. Gore and thus worthy of praise and adoration?  Did she feel that Vidal unfairly demonized his subject for shooting and killing Alexander Hamilton, the ultimate Federalist, in a duel?  Was the problem that Vidal illuminated Burr's treachery in his personal plot to take American land through force?  Or was she just offended that Gore Vidal, a very "out" gay man, wrote anything at all?

The message that I got from Burr was that unscrupulous people find their way into power for reasons of personal greed - and that message certainly did not drive me into the arms of the party of corporate America!

Then tonight on the way home, the crackpot de jour who was filling in for Rush Limbaugh, happened to mention that Sarah Palin was a fan of C.S. Lewis.  Okay, maybe she has seen some of the Chronicles of Narnia on television - the cartoon episodes - but I seriously doubt that she has read the complex and very philosophical C. S. Lewis.  I have worked my way through the print version of the Chronicles of Narnia as well as his science fiction / religious trilogy, and, while he is very thought-provoking, he is also very deep.  C.S. Lewis is way too much work for simple Sarah.

And yes, it is a very cool concept to be able to imply that you read one of the premier philosophers on the subject of Christianity, but the Lewis view of Christ is much more ethereal than anything Sarah would ever acknowledge.  Why, Lewis, never even went so far as to deny the theory of evolution or to suggest that dinosaurs and man walked the earth at the same time - 6,000 years ago.  Obviously by Sarah's standards, C.S.Lewis was not a true, gun-toting Christian, so why try to claim that she has read him.  Color me unimpressed - as hell!

But, who am I to talk   I'm currently reading Louis L'Amour!