100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is # 37) - A Review
By Gene Lalor
Posted On August 30, 2005

Bile sometimes has a way of inspiring writers. From Dr. Samuel Johnson to H.L. Mencken to our own Pat Buchanan, a serious case of bitter anger seems to invoke the Muse and suffuse writing with certain palpable insight--and sometimes even humor. Especially with such notables as David Horowitz, author of the graphic Hating Whitey: and Other Progressive Causes, and Bernard Goldberg, who had a best seller with his Bias, about blatant media bias, the bile seems to overflow with profusion animated, I believe, by the backgrounds of these two gentlemen. What they have in common was half a lifetime or more in the liberal and/or radical strata of our society. Horowitz had been a confidant of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers in the 1960's before he saw the light. And Goldberg was a member of that liberal fraternity we call mainstream media (CBS) until it finally dawned on him how slanted they were. Both came to the realization that they were on the wrong side. Hence, their repentant bitterness.

Goldberg’s latest best-seller is 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is # 37). Actually, he indicts far more than a hundred involved in the “screwing up” since, before he gets to individuals, he begins with what could be called generic chapters devoted to screw-ups who don’t merit individual chapters. His choices are well-made, though he includes a disclaimer in the introduction (and in an afterward) by writing, “There won’t be two people in the whole country who agree with every name in the book,” which is obviously true.

The generic chapters, begin with “America Bashers,” which unmasks “punitive liberals” who seem to despise themselves as well as their country, and “Hollywood Blowhards,” a chapter title which says it all and which quotes such political analysts as Jennifer Anniston (“Bush is a f**ing idiot”) and John Mellencamp, (Bush is a “cheap thug”). Very insightful. Goldberg then goes on to critique “TV Schlockmeisters” who are rapidly degrading the culture, gangsta rappers in, “I’m Your Pimp, You My Bitch–and Other Great American Love Songs,” and who actually make TV libs look good! Other generic chapters go after “American Jackals,” lawyers and the legal system. “I’m Offended, Therefore I Am,” exposes the perpetually-put-upon multi-culturalists. “Racial Enforcers,” derides those who turned on Bill Cosby for telling the truth. “White-Collar Thugs” rips the corporate world, including ENRON traders who delighted in bankrupting grannies. Then comes “Sex Warriors” on “screwball feminist theology.” And, finally, “Reading, Writing, and Radicals,” about our oh-so-politically-correct academia.

Goldberg is an even-handed basher who doesn’t just attack left wingers. He also excoriates such people as KKK darling David Duke (#66), the foul-mouthed commentator Michael Savage (#61), and even Judge Ray Moore (#21), the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who suffered a major lapse of discretion when he defied the law over a 2.6 ton version of the Ten Commandments. He also criticizes as moronic one John Green (#29), the inebriate who had his fifteen minutes of fame when he chose to initiate the most outrageous brawl in sports history and toss a beer at Ron Artest during an NBA game in Detroit.

Wisely, Goldberg or his publisher chose not to include an index or a table of contents in 100 People, frustrating browsers like me who intended to skim the book at Borders to see who made his list, and forcing me to buy it instead. Less wise was their decision not to include a single footnote to document any of the hundreds of quotations and allegations he incorporates in the three hundred and five pages. People such as Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan—who scrupulously document—would cringe. Still, it’s a good read.

Goldberg begins “The List” with Rick and Kathy Hilton (#100) and with the pithy comment that, “Okay, Paris Hilton has an excuse. She’s a moron. But her parents can’t be let off so easily.” He goes on to Sheila Jackson Lee (#98) the racist Black Democratic congresswoman who contends that Blacks are under-represented in hurricane names. Courtney Love’s (#95) chapter has all of one word: “Ho.” Bernard Goldberg is a harsh man!

Others who make the list are obvious nominees, some less so. They include:

- Richard Timmons (#93), a murderer who decapitated his pleading son, then sued New York City for $80 million for allegedly mistreating him; he lost;
- Sheldon Hackney (#87), the hypocritical president of U Penn;
- Barbara Foley (#76), English professor at Rutgers University who chose to attack American “fascism,” right after September 11, 2001;
- Harry Belafonte (#79), who, in effect, called Colin Powell a “house nigger” for supporting President Bush;
- Professor Ward Churchill (#72), for obvious reasons;
- Phil Donahue (#71), for being so fatuous and paranoid that he attacked bar codes as a corporate plot;
- Oliver Stone (#65), for trying to re-invent history;
- Ingrid Newkirk (#49), of PETA, for writing and believing that, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.” And equivalent?
- Robert Byrd (#48), KKK leader and the Senate’s King of Pork;
- Maxine Waters (#47), for racism and believing the CIA promoted drugs to destroy Blacks;
- Paul Eibler (#43), for promoting the cop-hating “game,” Grand Theft Auto;
- Peter Singer (#39), for endorsing the optional murder of newborns because, “Very often it’s not wrong at all.”

The remainder are so obviously “screwing up America” that it’s not worth listing the reasons. They include: Howard Dean (#20), Al Gore (#18), Al Sharpton (#17), Dan Rather (#12), Jimmy Carter (#6), Jesse Jackson (#4), Teddy Kennedy (#3), and Michael (Americans “are possibly the dumbest people on the planet”) Moore (#1).

In a brief afterward, Goldberg asks for input from his readers on whom they would have included in a list of those who are screwing up America and why, so I offer my contributions–not as substitutes but as addenda. I’d include Barry Bonds, (#10) because, (along with Jason Giambi, Mark McGuire and now Rafael Palmiero, et al.), he has disgraced himself and Major League Baseball with bogus stats; Rosie O’Donnell(#9)–in part because of her hypocrisy in attacking gun owners but having her adopted kids escorted to school by gun-toting body guards, in part because she’s amazingly obnoxious; Oprah (#8)–because she caters to depressed and distressed people and depresses and distresses them further; Dr. Phil(#7)–ditto; Gary Trudeau (#6)–because his venomous, anti-American Doonesbury is as much a comic strip as Boondocks is; Ted Turner(#5)–because he’s an egotistical anti-Catholic bigot who was dumb enough to marry Jane Fonda; Greta van Susteren(#4)–because she has shamelessly made the disappearance of a teen in Aruba into a cottage industry, and has virtually ignored all other news for almost three months; Cindy Sheehan(#3)–because she has sold her soul to the left, embarrassed her family and sullied the memory of her hero son; Sean Penn(#2)–because he’s come to believe that spending his life pretending to be other people has entitled him to think he has the moral clarity and acumen to judge our nation–after he had the bad judgment to bed and wed Madonna; and, Madonna, (#1) simply because she’s Madonna.

Like Goldberg, I didn’t take a poll. Readers are invited to post their own nominees, with or without bile.

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