Bridgewater Review Volume 22 | Issue 2 Article 15 Dec-2003 Book Review: Subversive Fun Charles F. Angell Bridgewater State College, [email protected] Recommended Citation Angell, Charles F. (2003). Book Review: Subversive Fun. Bridgewater Review, 22(2), 31-32. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol22/iss2/15 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Book Reviews: Subversive Fun Lies and the Lying Liars Confronted with his misrep- resentations, O’Reilly Who Tell Them refused to admit a mistake Al Franken and berated Franken in a public forum. “There’s no Stupid White Men shame in screwing up a sta- Michael Moore tistic every now and then,” Franken Bushwhacked: notes. “People make Life in mistakes. It’s just somewhere deep in George W. O’Reilly’s psyche Bush’s America there’s clearly a ter- Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose ror of being proved wrong. When he’s con- fronted with a mistake, the bully comes out, by Charles F. Angell and he bludgeons his guests with incorrect or just made-up facts and figures.” Fox executives Despite complaints from were reluctant to initiate the libel action, but conservative commentators not wanting to antagonize O’Reilly whose of a liberal bias in the press contract—I believe I remember reading—was and electronic media, liberal coming up for renewal, they filed. O’Reilly, commentators like those one might say, bullied and bludgeoned his reviewed here have begun employer and, in a delicious irony, highlighted to raise their voices and Franken’s point about him. The judge—a document how such right Clinton appointee?—found the case without wing conservatives as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, merit and dismissed it. Ann Coulter, and Rupert Murdoch through his newspa- Franken and his Harvard student researchers, pers and the Fox Network have managed to place their TeamFranken he calls them, exhaustively catalogue the conservative agenda before the public. The recent CBS lies and distortions the right-wing media promulgates. decision not to air a film biography of Ronald Reagan He observes that Bush and other Republicans claimed illustrates the influence conservative voices can exercise during the 2000 campaign that the American military when they feel a fellow conservative is not receiving was unprepared to fight, that it had been “gutted” by “fair and balanced” treatment. Ivins, Moore, and Clinton administration policies; yet, less than two Franken raise their voices in protest against what they years after his election, Bush had the military engaged perceive as conservative distortions of and frequent dis- and victorious in Afghanistan and Iraq. Franken com- regard for the truth. Polemical and humorous, though pares Bush budgets and policies to Clinton’s and sub- differing intensities of anger often strain the humor, the stantiates that the Clinton administration had three writers share a concern that, driven by money and undertaken significant reforms in military procurement an economic rationalist philosophy that claims the mar- and preparedness that contributed to the military effec- ketplace will always determine the most socially useful tiveness in Afghanistan and Iraq. Franken cites outcomes, the nation’s current politics will rend social instances where following 9/11 conservative politicians contracts that have provided bedrock support for most blamed Clinton for “de-emphasizing” the military Americans since at least the New Deal. (Orrin Hatch) or for Clinton’s “backing off, letting the Al Franken’s LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM Taliban go, over and over again” (Rep. Dana achieved notoriety when Bill O’Reilly of the O’Reilly Rohrabacher). Conservatives have learned that in many Factor had his Fox Network employers enter a civil parts of the country Clinton-bashing pays off in votes; action claiming Franken had libeled him. In his chapter Franken points out the extent of the fabrications “Bill O’Reilly: Lying, Splotchy Bully,” Franken had employed to make the former president appear respon- accused O’Reilly of falsely taking credit for prestigious sible for our current problems. (I can’t resist urging peo- journalism awards that he had in fact not received. ple to read a recent The American Prospect interview with BRIDGEWATER REVIEW DECEMBER 2003 31 Bill Clinton as he evaluates the current political cli- profit centers for publishing companies. It’s no surprise mate.) The consequence of right-wing mendacity that the business lobby has a pack of dogs in the educa- Franken concludes is that “all the lies, small and large, tion-legislation hunt.” Ivins focuses most sharply on the add up. They create a world view in which the main- by now well-entrenched movement to use high-stakes stream media is a liberal propaganda machine… The standardized testing as the means for assessing stu- right-wing media’s lies create a world in which no one dents, teachers, and school districts. She cites needs to feel any obligation to anybody else. It’s a researchers who have compared rising state test scores worldview designed to comfort the comfortable and that show greatly improved student performance further afflict the afflicted.” against more stable national norms that show only incremental, if any, improvement. The researchers con- Michael Moore, whose documentary Bowling for clude that the rising scores imply a shrinking population Columbine won him an Oscar and the right to afflict the of test takers or, to state it differently, an increasing comfortable in his acceptance speech, has essentially population of drop-outs, especially among minorities. expanded those remarks in STUPID WHITE MEN. Moore, a (MCAS may soon compel Commonwealth educators to less genial version of the Will Rogers humorist, purports recognize this consequence.) Ivins also argues that cor- to speak for the little guy, the average American, who he porations regard such high-stakes testing as necessary feels is taking a screwing from the unholy alliance of big for training students with “basic literacy and number business and big government. For Moore George W. skills” to become workers who can “compete in the Bush typifies the stupid white men for whom we are global market.” Corporations want workers, not citi- asked “to get up in the morning to work our asses off to zens, and view schools as a humanpower resource. produce goods and services that only serve to make the Corporate interests, while not completely opposed to junta and its cohorts in Corporate America (a separate, education interests—every teacher understands that autonomous fiefdom within the United States that has schooling should provide students with marketable been allowed to run on its own for some time) even skills—do conflict richer.” In his chapter “Idiot Nation,” Moore enumer- with broader social, ates how politicians have failed the nation’s public political, and person- schools. His list of failures is familiar: inadequate fund- al interests. A citizen ing, depressed teacher salaries, deteriorating facilities, is only partly a con- out-dated textbooks, corporate intrusion into the cur- sumer, only partly a riculum. Moore notes that “schools and corporations worker; Not all our sometimes turn the school itself into one giant neon time is spent in the sign for corporate America. Appropriation of school workplace or at the space, including scoreboards, rooftops, walls, and text- mall. books, for corporate logos and advertising is up 539 per- cent.” (In Massachusetts budget shortfalls find some Ivins quotes school districts contemplating advertising in school Mussolini who once buses.) Citizens are forced to confront the issue George remarked “Fascism Bernard Shaw dramatized in Major Barbara: can or should more properly should an institution dedicated to relieving human mis- be called corpo- ery (in Shaw’s drama the Salvation Army) accept fund- ratism, since it is the ing from a source (Bodger’s Distillery) deeply complicit merger of state and in causing that misery? Should or can schools dedicated corporate power.” At both to educating informed citizens and pursuing the a time when some American corporations manage . ANGELL truth permit funding by commercial organizations dedi- assets larger than those of many governments which cated to profit? Such questions invite no easy gives them immense political power and access; when answers—see Major Barbara; yet schools desperate to corporate executives (still mostly white males) move leave no child behind and lacking the financial resources seamlessly between high corporate and political office to help them catch up elide the question in the hope and use their power to aggrandize themselves and their CHARLES F they can transform profit into wisdom. I find myself corporate interests (e.g. Kenneth Lay of Enron, Richard sympathetic to Moore’s advice to high-school students Cheney of Halliburton); and when these same execu- to subvert rather than submit. The brand of authority tives and politicians justify their actions by a pervasive corporations peddle ought to be interrogated at every economic rationalism which holds that the market will level and, if school officials in their quest for funding produce the best decisions, at such a time schools won’t confront squarely a corrupted bargain, the stu- should be educating citizens to question loud and long. dents certainly should. But as Franken, Moore, and Ivins all in different ways point out, Americans are an optimistic and trusting Molly Ivins’ BUSHWHACKED sounds the same theme. In people. Maybe we’ll only need to worry when the trains BOOK REVIEWS her chapter “Leave No Child Behind,” she writes “some (and planes) start to run on time. critics would say that the Bushies believe education law should be written not only by big business but for big —Charles F. Angell is Professor of English business. This is not new. Schools have always been.