Sorriest excuse for a book review I've ever read
A helpful reader, Allan J. Favish, has emailed me to point out that finally, in Sunday's edition, the New York Times has finally gotten around to reviewing John O'Neill's Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. I say "finally" because this week, the book holds the number three spot on the NYT's own best-seller list for the second week in a row; it held the number one spot three, four, five, and six weeks ago; and it's been on the list now for eight consecutive weeks.
I'm a fan of book reviews, having commissioned and/or edited about a dozen very strong, article-length book reviews — as the first person to hold that editorship unmixed with other responsibilities — for the Texas Law Review. (The reviewers I dealt with included Professors Charles Alan Wright, Herma Hill Kay, Mark Tushnet, Douglass Laycock, Sanford Levinson, and William C. Powers, Jr.) So I'll claim some credentials as, so to speak, a "book review reviewer." But frankly, no expertise is needed to size up this particular book review as a piece of shallow, partisan garbage. Written by "Susannah Meadows[, who] is covering the Kerry campaign for Newsweek," this one concludes:
<<<<Kerry has never been a terribly beloved figure in Massachusetts politics, and in the presidential race he's buoyed more by hatred of Bush than by any passion for his candidacy. But the irony is that this book goes after the one piece of Kerry's history that left the politician with his greatest friends, the lifelong die-hards for the cause. In its determination to wreck Kerry's candidacy, ''Unfit for Command'' seems to reveal more about the authors than about Kerry.>>>>
But Ms. Meadows' extremely superficial review reveals more about herself and her determination to promote Kerry's candidacy than it does about the book. Here, for example, is the review's entire description of the controversy over Kerry's medals:
<<<<Navy records have discredited the book's claim that Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star and third Purple Heart — though only after the sensation hijacked cable news for a month.>>>>
That's it — half a sentence that mentions only half the medals in dispute; and far, far less than half an effort at comprehensiveness or honesty.
Ms. Meadows' begins her review with this statement, very nearly the only accurate one in her entire review:
<<<<If John Kerry loses the presidential election, ''Unfit for Command,'' by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, will go down as a chief reason.>>>>
Yes, ma'am — and you and the NYT will be on record as having completely failed to grasp, much less to honestly deal with, that chief reason. This is an effort so pathetic that it actually should be insulting even to Sen. Kerry's partisans. |
