BobHarris.com - Ceci n'est pas une Vice President

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

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“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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CDI

Ceci n'est pas une Vice President

Tag it now -

Wednesday, 27 June 2007

Cheney's office is now going to have to claim executive privilege to avoid a congressional subpoena.

This right after Cheney's office declared that, contrary to 218 years of US constitutional history, his office is not part of the executive branch.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the last six and a half years would make a lot more sense if the GOP were actually performing a sophisticated Dada art exhibition.

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This Cheney character would actually be pretty tolerable if he weren't actually real. You could just say, OK, I see what they're doing here -- this is clearly modeled on the fictional Bob Rumson from Aaron Sorkin's The American President. Then give him two drunk driving convictions, a lesbian daughter, and a wife who writes soft-core erotica, just so everyone knows the reactionary moralizing is all just a put-on. Then give him five Vietnam deferments and a continuing income from Halliburton so absolutely no one can find him credible on defense issues. Oh, and get his office involved in the outing of a covert CIA employee involved with monitoring the proliferation of WMDs in the mideast, and then have him claim national security as his keynote issue.

If suddenly Cheney just pulled off the rubber mask, and it was actually Mike Myers underneath, just screwing around, OK, then it would all make more sense.

But that day surely must be getting close. Apparently they've decided to make increasingly insane claims, some of them bordering on self-contradictory, just so maybe the country will finally catch on and say, "hey now, wait -- this is all a put-on, isn't it?"

Incidentally, the Washington Post has just done an excellent four-part series on what Rumson, er, Cheney here has been up to and how. Highly recommended.

So now Dick Cheney is back in the executive branch. Until he decides he isn't again. He's like Schrödinger's Cat, and Congress can't open the box.

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Ceci n'est pas une Vice President.

While we're at it, here are a few other things Dick Cheney is and/or is not:

A half-human gill-breather, allergic to sunlight, and hellbent on global domination
Able to dematerialize at will, reassembling his atoms at an undisclosed location
Bionic, with a titanium heart encased in cesium which cannot be stopped by anything short of atomic blast
A fun guy around firearms and beer
Careful to mark and catalog even his own bowel movements as Top Secret
Able to connect to the Internet simply by raising his hand and shouting, "Cheney online!"
Affected by international standards of law, human rights, and basic human decency
Staring right this second at a wall map of Iran, holding a giant red crayon, with spittle accumulating in the corners of his mouth
Overwhelmed with guilt and despair, as any sane human being might be

Don't be surprised if one day they all show up one day wearing mime outfits, just so more people would get it.