100 People Who Are Screwing Up America

Amazon.com: Books: 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America : (and Al Franken Is #37) by Bernard Goldberg: "No preaching. No pontificating. Just some uncommon sense about the things that have made this country great -- and the culprits who are screwing it up.

Bernard Goldberg takes dead aim at the America Bashers (the cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at "ordinary" Americans) ... the Hollywood Blowhards (incredibly ditzy celebrities who think they're smart just because they're famous) ... the TV Schlockmeisters (including the one whose show has been compared to a churning mass of maggots devouring rotten meat) ... the Intellectual Thugs (bigwigs at some of our best colleges, whose views run the gamut from left wing to far left wing) ... and many more.

Goldberg names names, counting down the villains in his rogues' gallery from 100 all the way to 1 -- and, yes, you-know-who is number 37. Some supposedly "serious" journalists also made the list, including the journalist-diva who sold out her integrity and hosted one of the dumbest hours in the history of network television news. And there are those famous miscreants who have made America a nastier place than it ought to be -- a far more selfish, vulgar, and cynical place.

But Goldberg doesn't just round up the usual suspects we have come to know and detest. He also exposes some of the people who operate away from the limelight but still manage to pull a lot of strings and do all sorts of harm to our culture. Most of all, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is about a country where as long as anything goes, as one of the good guys in the book puts it, sooner or later everything will go.

This is serious stuff for sure. But Goldberg will also make you laugh as he harpoons scoundrels like the congresswoman who thinks there aren't enough hurricanes named after black people, and the environmentalist to the stars who yells at total strangers driving SUVs -- even though she tools around the country in a gas-guzzling private jet.

With Bias, Bernard Goldberg took us behind the scenes and exposed the way Big Journalism distorts the news. Now he has written a book that goes even further. This time he casts his eye on American culture at large -- and the result is a book that is sure to become the voice of all those Americans who feel that no one is speaking for them on perhaps the most vital issue of all: the kind of country in which we want to live."

Besides the fact that there seems to be no down to earth answers being provided by the author of this book, the biggest problem for me is that this book is being taken too serious by too many people. You cant take a book serious if it is going to take shots at people who seem to be bringing down society but not having any real answers for ourselves and our kids and our society at large. Too many people seem to be taking the overall subject of the book to heart. They either find it "absolute true" and should be loved or "absolute false" and should be vilified; myself, I choose neither points of view, I choose to see it as an interesting read but I am grown up enough to know that I have chosen my views through my study of the views and not through someone else telling me what to believe. Too many people on both sides of the views on this book seems to take it far more serious than it should be taken. This book should be considered a trivia style book, interesting to read, but please, dont turn it into Scripture.

I know HarperCollins is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, but this is bad even for them.

Who's on Mr. Goldberg's list? Mainly those who promote the true good American values of freedom, liberty, tolerance, diversity, generosity, caring, kindness, truth, justice, understanding, compassion, ethics, and morality. AND to throw you off, a few trashy entertainers and off the deep end right wing nut cases (e.g. Roy Moore, Michael Savage), who the average middle of the road American will easily agree with.

The one's who should be on there, the worst Americans representing the worst in humanity, the fear mongers, the hate mongers, the greedy, the corrupt, the unethical, the bigoted, the prejudiced, the liars, the false witness bearers, the intolerant, the oppressors, the ultra-extreme-nationalists, (the Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity's), essentially the average right wing nut job of the Republican party are absent from Mr. Goldberg's list.

The only one's who this book will appeal to are the already converted aforementioned Kool-Aide drinkers who've bought into the illusions offered by the insideous right wing lie machine.

His one hundred screw-ups include Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Barbara Streisand, and Tim Robbins, all people who happen to disagree with Mr. Goldberg. And his reasons for including them in his list of destructive Americans are juvenile. Howard Dean is there primarily because he said during the Iowa campaign that George Bush is not his neighbor. Bill Moyers is listed simply because he disagrees with Mr. Bush's policies.

As for the review itself, I will give this book a 4 out of five. It was a quick read but it was pretty interesting and well written. The best message came from the first 50 pages of the book as the author explains his views and how the country has changed for the worse in his opinion. Liberals, if your are easily offended and hate all that is conservitive you should not read this book and for god sake do not review it, you will not give it a fair chance, just go read. May I recommend reading Al Franken's "books" instead, followed by a 15th viewing of Ferenheit911. Conservitives, if you wand to read about how the country has deteriorated, and the people who have led to it, then this book is for you.

His constant bellyaching about Afro- Americans and race is becoming irritating. Gangsta Rap, Jesse Jackson, Ludacris, Aaron Mc Gruder, Julian Bond and a few other black folks in which he does not agree with politically. I am going to get called an Anti- Semite for this, but I frankly don't care (he didn't care to critcize Afro- Americans so I might as well return the favor.)

Goldberg is one of these Jewish conservatives who used to be a liberal and is now embittered that black folks became "human beings' and not politcal pets to assuage white folks guilt and didn't act "like their better angels" and feels it is his responsiblity to ferret out anti- white or american feelings amongst blacks because he sat in a black church and was moved by Dr. King (and MAY HAVE marched with him in Selma or whatever.) and we are not living up to the "Dr. King Theme" of tolerance, love, and color blindness.

Well these Afro- Americans he mentions have no political or social power to screw up this country, and then he goes on tangents about Hip -Hop culture. (something most white americans and Goldberg know nothing about)and calls Ludacris a "gangsta rapper" when he is a pop star who raps. Gangsta Rap was a form of rap between 1987 -1996 and died as a genre with the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. 70 percent of Hip-Hop's auidence are white,(who love to believe in the sterotypes of black folks being criminally-minded and such.) so It must go to reason that it is white american parents who are letting their children be corrupted by "gangsta rapper" Ludacris.

I remember when groups like Public Enemy, De La Soul and other great rap crews(who were spearding postive vibes in black culture in the late 80's early 90's) were being called "racist and anti- semite" By conservative Jews like Goldberg, now he says the record industry ( whom most of the record execs are of Jewish extraction and that's a fact unlike most of his book.)are posioning the minds of American youth with Hip- Hop.

Well this society was poisoned cultrually long before an M.C. picked up a mic and american men were calling women b**&, H&&, and c&*% long before 1973 which is Hip- Hop's birth. And his critcism of people like Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson (No.3) and Al Sharpton was laughable at best, they are advocates for their communties no different than the Christian Coalition or any other conservative organization so why are they singled out because they have a liberal point of view that jibes with his view of "colorblindness" and they are dividing the country along racial lines please (These people have never issued a fatwa condemning america).

There are 38 million black people in this country and we are not sheep NOR DO WE ALL THINK ALIKE. (unlike what most of you white conservatives think about black folks.)And the white press made these people leaders. Now Goldberg who is part of that machine (he works for HBO which is owned by Time Warner) wants now to criticize the same people he helped make is hypocritical at best racist at worst. I would love to go back to good journalism, great televison, good music and polite intellectual conversation.(which most red staters hate and accuse them of "liberal bias" thanks to people like Goldberg)