Books! Actual books!
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"Pulls you in like a good sports story"
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"
-- New York Newsday
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Snappy and informative"
-- Associated Press
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."
-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life
"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."
-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game
"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"
-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All
"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."
-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history
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“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
— Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
— New York Observer
"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”
— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”
— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."
— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review
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An historic shutout |
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Wednesday, 08 November 2006 |
Top of my head, just woke up to do a morning radio show at an ungodly hour, organizing my thoughts:
• The good guys' win is even more one-sided than it looks at first glance.
If the numbers stay as they are (pending recounts, etc.), here's the final scoreboard, assuming I haven't missed something:
Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the Senate.
Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the House of Representatives.
Not one Democratic incumbent lost in any state Governorship.
All told, 504 major offices were at stake tonight.
Not one changed hands going Democrat to Republican.
I've looked, and while there have been a handful of past elections
where a greater number of seats changed hands, I can't find a more one-sided repudiation of a ruling party in American
history. (Although I fully expect someone out there reading this will,
about five seconds after I hit the "publish" button.)
• Ironically, Joe Lieberman may become the most powerful man in the Senate.
Fredo couldn't even win his own primary, but thanks to GOP support for
his Independent campaign (since he lost the Democrat primary, his party
was essentially Liebermans for Lieberman), he's returning to the
Senate. He promises to caucus with the Democrats, so if Tester and
Webb win, he'll be part of a 51-49 majority -- but if he defects to the
Republicans, he gives them a 50-50 tie which Dick Cheney
constitutionally breaks. So suddenly Lieberman becomes the swing vote,
possibly for the next two solid years.
If that's not a strong argument for going to a parliamentary system, I don't know what is.
• The GOP danced with the nutjob that brought them.
GOP scammer-cum-Congresswoman-cum-flailing Senate candidate Katherine
Harris lost by over a million votes to a Democratic Senate incumbent
who was entirely beatable.
But Miss "I never wore blue eye shadow!" ran one of the most pathetic
campaigns in history, punctuated by questionable financing, laughable
gaffes, and increasingly odd behavior. Eventually, she couldn't even
keep her own staff, and every single major newspaper in the entire
state endorsed her opponent.
You could almost see the bucket of water hitting the Wicked Witch,
followed by a lot of "I'm melting! I'm melting!" and dissolving into
the floor.
If the GOP had mustered a less obvious wackjob, the Democrats would
hold no better than the 50-50 situation, giving Republicans continued
control over the Senate.
• No, really. The GOP danced with the nutjob that brought them.
Limbaugh. Missouri. Stem cells. Narrow margin, toss-up race. Rush
mocks a courageous and much-beloved actor with a history of
bipartisanship.
The Viagra-smuggling Oxycontin addict's preferred candidate never leads
outside the margin of error again. One more Senate seat thrown to the
Democrats.
• No, really, seriously. The GOP totally danced with the nutjob that brought them.
"Macaca." And now Allen looks likely to lose Virginia by less than one-half of one percent of the vote.
This makes a total of three Senate seats the GOP lost simply by acting like collossal pricks.
Pretty breathtaking.
• Diversity seems up. So it's an even worse day to be Bill O'Reilly.
First female Speaker of the House.
First Muslim in the U.S. Congress.
First black state governor in Massachusetts history (and only the second in American history).
(This last reminds me of a shameful fact: when I was studying for Jeopardy!, I memorized all of the black Senators in U.S. history. No big deal -- you can count them on one hand.)
• Your vote may not always matter much -- but you never know when it could.
At the moment, it looks like Democrats will probably carry Virginia, so
control of the Senate comes down only to Montana. As I write this, Jon
Tester's lead over Conrad ("Montgomery") Burns is only 1735 votes, with
99% of the ballot counted.
The key chunk of the vote is Yellowstone County, which historically
leans to the GOP. It's also where the GOP incumbent where Conrad Burns
begain his career.
How many votes would Burns have typically picked up in Yellowstone
County, if the vote ran according to historic patterns? Certainly more
than the 1222 he picked up last night. And very likely more than the
he would have needed to throw the state in the red column.
But Yellowstone County went only mildly Republican, instead of
over-the-top Republican. Jon Tester got 3880 more Democratic votes
than John Kerry did in 2004. And that's the margin of victory in the
state.
Which means that control over the United States Senate ultimately comes
down to Democratic voters in one Montana county who thought it was
more important than usual to vote.
• When a few votes make a difference, that difference might be enormous.
Control over the Senate determines which party leads the Judiciary
Committee, which decides whether Supreme Court nominations can reach
the floor for a vote.
The next judges nominated will likely replace Stevens (age 86),
Ginsberg (age 73), Kennedy (age 70), Souter (age 67), or Breyer (age
68). These are all of the moderate and liberal justices on the court.
The four others are all hardline conservatives.
(Average age: 59. Granted, Scalia is 70. But he drinks the blood of Girl Scouts, and
thus will never die.)
So a handful of people in one Montana county may have also just influenced the fundamental nature of our society for a
generation.
So that's what I think this election means -- at least, before I've had my coffee. So take this pretty lightly.
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