Book Review: It's the Stupidity Stupid

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: It's the Stupidity, Stupid


Author: Harry Shearer

Author's web page: http://www.harryshearer.com/

Date: 1999

Publisher: Ballantine

ISBN: 0-345-43401-3

Length: 104 pages

Quote: "I'd like to thank the voters and politicians of America for making this book both possible and necessary. You know who you are. Sue yourselves."

If the title It's the Stupidity, Stupid, does not instantly recall Bill Clinton's campaign slogan, "It's the economy, stupid," to your mind, you are too young to appreciate this book. If it does, and you were in Washington during the Clinton years, you've heard all the jokes in this book. Otherwise, there may be some chance that Clinton jokes (and fun facts) exist that you've not heard, and this book is where you'll find them.

Harry Shearer was not originally one of the people who hated Clinton--or, more accurately, hated that Clinton had become President. It took a lot of redneckery to prompt a Democrat to write this compendium of Clinton's mistakes as a sort of study of How the President of the United States Should Not Behave.

Of course, the problem with writing political satire is that one has to beware of alleged facts that can't be proved. Shearer writes, "FDR, whose marriage may yet turn out to be the template for the Clintons' (he and Eleanor both had girlfriends)..." Having made a serious study of the Clintons at the time, I automatically think: Not quite. "Girl friends" means those of the primary school and neighborhood park crowd who happened to be girls; all normal Americans had girl friends, at least when they were little girls or boys, or their children were. "Girlfriends," in the sense of female bedmates, has never been proved. Eleanor Roosevelt had lesbian admirers and tried to be kind to them, but surviving documentation proves only that Mrs. Roosevelt rejected certain lesbian propositions.

Unfortunately for Clinton fans, most of the facts in this book have been verified. And Shearer's presentation of them is funny, and more tasteful than a lot of the comedy that was floating around Washington in the 1990s. So, if you like Clinton jokes and haven't already read this book, read it for the chuckles and the memories.