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So This Is Depravity

por Russell Baker

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1023264,642 (3.67)6
 "It is not that Russell Baker is funny, his genius is being so true that nothing remains but to laugh." --John Kenneth Galbraith "Baker, like Andy Rooney, looks into things that keep all our lives from being ordinary." --Chattanooga News-Free Press Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Russell Baker has charmed readers with his sharp humor and shrewd commentary. The indelible voice of the bestselling memoir GROWING UP compiles some of his greatest work in this collection of honest, witty, and profound essays--reflecting on politics, society, and life in all its absurd glory.… (más)
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It was in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election that I first, all unwitting, encountered the phenomenon of American political commentary in all its ugly reality. My image of the American political commentator was based largely on The West Wing and on Alistair Cooke, that doyen of reasoned and courteous intelligence. There was no clear presidential winner; so, fed up with the ignorance of the British media on the subject, I started to visit American websites for enlightenment. A media industry that had picked Jed Bartlet as their fictional President would be bound to have something profound and insightful to say on the situation… right?

Oh dear.

It was a rude awakening indeed. The strident bigotry… the certainty in the mind of every pundit, of every self-appointed online commentator, that they were right and the other guys were wrong and stupid… the playing to the gallery of extremists.

The great Mr Cooke made the point: ‘In my experience, a weary one that lasted through six days and evenings, there was not one man or woman of whom you could say: "I don't know which party he/she belongs to."’ He did not intend it as a compliment.

For the 2004 presidential election, my expat American wife decided for some reason that I needed to be kept away from the current generation of media mediocrats, and gave me a copy of ‘So This is Depravity’ - Russell Baker’s collection of essays, most of them reprinted from his regular column in The New York Times between 1973 and 1980.

Here was a commentator, an essayist, who could write of serious subjects without taking himself too seriously; who could, amazingly, write with wisdom, empathy and compassion in the midst of that grim period of enforced national self-awareness, when America had, for perhaps the first time in its history, messed up spectacularly and publicly both at home (Watergate) and abroad (Vietnam).

And slipped in between Baker’s wry, witty comment on current affairs and politics, the reverse to its obverse, is his humour. Whether in the catalogue of DIY disaster, “They Don’t Make That Anymore” (p. 94), his foray into culinary immortality, “Francs and Beans” (p. 132), or his account of reading Proust, “Crawling Up Everest” (p. 252 – but oh, for an index or a table of contents anywhere in this book!), Baker has a knack for taking some facet of everyday life and following it to its most absurd and yet logical conclusion – and making us laugh while he does it.

Nowadays Baker’s editor would tell him to be ashamed of his classical education, to hide it away in a filing cabinet, lest it embarrass or confuse some less erudite reader. Fortunately for literary posterity, neither that editor nor that reader had been born when Baker was coaxing “Caesar’s Puerile Wars” (p. 27) out of his Remington.

It is all a far cry from the world of blogs and Facebook, where any fool with an internet connection can spew forth his or her opinion without restraint, moderation or decorum. One longs for the wisdom of a Cooke or the wit of a Baker to make sense of the events of 2011, rather than a sub-culture of pundits and bloggers who rely so heavily on the language of hatred.

I do not 'do' the language of hatred. We each have enough to contend with in life without filling ourselves with hatred - particularly other people's hatred.

Freedom of speech is all very well. The trouble is that it’s too often used as an excuse – an excuse for hatred, for bigotry, for the sheer lazy stupidity of playing to one’s own extremist gallery. The enraged self-righteousness of the strident blogger doesn’t change anyone’s mind; it merely entrenches existing opinions pro or con.

The good news is that these characteristics, the bigotry and the smallness of mind, expose themselves. The other good news is that we can choose not to take part in this dreary, destructive trench warfare.

Russell Baker sets a benchmark for intelligent commentary on the awkward and the unpalatable. Those who wish to express their opinions on the circumstances of 2011 would be well advised to read him, to learn from his wise and good-humoured example, before they commit their views to the ether.

(A fuller version of this review appears at http://wp.me/p1u5Oe-1D) ( )
1 vota BenBennetts | May 1, 2011 |
This is a collection of Russell Baker's political columns from the 1970s. In my opinion, Baker is one of the greatest political humorists of the 20th Century. He doesn't seem to take one side or the other, but he skewers everyone indiscriminately, and his observations are spot on. Even though this collection is extremely dated (were the 70's really 30+ years ago?), I was surprised (and a little bit chagrined) to find out how little things have changed. Sometimes, it's a good idea to read dated history (particularly humor), just to remind ourselves that we are forever doomed to repeat history. ( )
1 vota tloeffler | Jan 19, 2010 |
More of Russell Baker's social and political commentary; by now he is occasionally scoring with the truly moving column, such as "The Aged, Shopping". When he chooses to, he can be as moving as my favorite columnist, Bob Greene. Most of his columns still mine the field of absurdist humor, which is not my favorite style, but nobody does it better. ( )
  burnit99 | Dec 27, 2006 |
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 "It is not that Russell Baker is funny, his genius is being so true that nothing remains but to laugh." --John Kenneth Galbraith "Baker, like Andy Rooney, looks into things that keep all our lives from being ordinary." --Chattanooga News-Free Press Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Russell Baker has charmed readers with his sharp humor and shrewd commentary. The indelible voice of the bestselling memoir GROWING UP compiles some of his greatest work in this collection of honest, witty, and profound essays--reflecting on politics, society, and life in all its absurd glory.

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