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Americans Behaving Badly
By Jake Easton
Book Review October 24, 2002
by Brian S. Wise,
Lead Columnist for
IntellectualConservative.com
 he inherent challenge in chronicling the aftermath of the Tragedies, both for those doing it today and those who will do it 50 years from now, is capturing the correct mood of the time. When it was first decided I would review Jake Easton’s Americans Behaving Badly (a collection of articles and quotations recounting some of the best, and a lot of the worst, in thought and reaction since the attacks), I began downloading audio recorded on the morning of the hijackings, mostly from radio shows. The contrast between the audio and Mr. Easton’s book struck me: on the morning of 11 September 2001, little more than chaos and disinformation could be found (e.g. the car bomb that was said to have gone off at the Capital, the alleged second plane that caused the north tower to collapse), but this was not without good reason; the warm sanctity of American security was being compromised more significantly than at any time since Pearl Harbor, and most of the country felt raped as a result.
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Notice the qualifier: most of the country. Americans Behaving Badly succinctly displays the mood of the time for those who, first of all, most significantly missed the point of America’s meaning and worth, and then displayed their lack of understanding by speaking in the days and months that followed the Tragedies. These were circumstances and times when reasonable, logical people should have been able to understand what that day meant for us and the world, but didn’t, for reasons rooted in faltering ideology and unflattering ignorance.
| | "If you follow American politics long enough, you'll come to believe you have heard the dumbest things man has ever managed.
Then you come to the fourteenth chapter and begin learning all over again." |
We have all heard of the women forced to drink their own breast milk, the 80-year-old woman forced into a strip search and the elderly man who was arrested for asking a screener if he expected to find a rifle in the man’s wallet, et cetera. But only a few of us heard of the teenage boy forced to drink the contaminated creek water he’d collected for a biology class (and his subsequent illness), the X-ray machine operators who fell asleep at their posts and the delays caused by someone noticing unplugged screening machines. These examples are set out there in the first chapter, and they serve well in getting the reader sufficiently irritated before he moves on to, well, worse things.
Although we are treated to retellings of unique acts of heroism (my favorite is the window washer who saved six people with his squeegee), what sells Americans Behaving Badly are the aforementioned dissenters. The chapter that most makes this book worth owning is the fourteenth, a collection of quotations. Now, if you follow American politics long enough (this includes those people who consider themselves unelected politicians – actors, musicians, et cetera), you’ll come to believe you have heard the dumbest things Man has ever managed. Then you come to the fourteenth chapter and begin learning all over again. Not only are you treated to Sandra Bernhard’s immortal classic, “The ‘real’ terrorists are George W. Bush and his band of brown-shirted thugs,” but Lee Ryan’s soaring missive, “What about whales? They are ignoring animals that are more important. Animals need saving and that’s more important. The New York thing is being blown out of proportion … Who gives a f*** about New York when elephants are being killed?”
Americans Behaving Badly is, for my tastes, a quick, well documented read, and recommended here for a reminder first and a research document second. It succeeds where many of the much longer tellings of the Tragedies do not, i.e. getting to the point rather quickly and without bludgeoning the reader.
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Copyright © 2002-2003 by Brian S. Wise, Lead Columnist for IntellectualConservative.com
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Excerpts 
About The Book
Americans Behaving Badly exposes the outrageous behavior of liberal politicians, celebrities, the media, and those that exploited the September 11 attacks against America. 
This site provides a preview of the hundreds of news stories outlined in 
