In a way it's about the Simpsons, but not really. It uses the Simpsons as a jumping-off point for discussing the times in which we live. It's a four-hundred-plus page rant on the state of Western, and particulary, American, culture. It is a very funny, but ultimately depressing, book that paints the American people as happy slaves to their corporate masters. We live in fascist times, but maybe we don't mind so much, after all.
One passage I found particulary moving was about our leaders' response to the the events of September 11, 2001.
In Episode 2F11 ("Bart's Comet"), Springfield is under imminent threat
of total destruction by a comet hurtling towards the earth. The town's
best minds get together and decide to launch a rocket at the comet, but
their rocket misses its target and plummets back to earth, destroying
the only bridge out of town. Cut to the floor of the U.S. Congress,
where a bill is tabled to provide funding for the evacuation of
Springfield. Just before the vote, a congressman adds a rider to the
bill providing $30 million "for the perverted arts." The bill is
defeated. Cut to news anchor Kent Brockman, who turns to his viewing
audience with this summary, "I've said it before and I'll say it again:
democracy simply does not work."
That was a sentiment that occurred to me often in the days after
September 11, 2001, as I tried somehow to reconcile the horror of
watching the two tallest buildings in New York collapse live on
television with the extraordinarily banal responses put forward by the
elected leaders of the world's democracies -- especially that
self-proclaimed last best hope for humanity, the United States of
America.
Even before the fires had gone out in the pile of rubble that once was
the World Trade Center, America's leaders had carefully surveyed the
damage. Had considered its enourmous impact on everyday life. And then
had risen as one in a brave chorus, imparting their sage advice to a
shaken nation. The advice? Go shopping. By the tragedy's two-week
anniversary, President Bush had called for "continued participation and
confidence in the American economy." New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
advised, "Just spend a little money." Vice-President Dick Cheney was
urging "a normal level of economic activity." Senator Bob Graham
explained that buying a new car was "an act of patriotism." The
president's brother, Jeb, added going to a restaurant and taking a
cruise tho the list of patriotic acts. Senator John McCain, beloved for
his straight-talking ways, cut succinctly throught the politicking. "We
need," he explained, "to spend money."
No longer living after history, we in the West, and in many other
places, were instantly awake to a new and grave reality. We were
horrified but resolute, finally ready to move beyond the trivialities of
reality TV and day trading and a new pair of Nikes. But in the weeks
and then months after September 11, not a single of the great leaders of
our peerless West -- these lands of the free, cradles of civilization,
beacons of liberty and jsutince, wellsprings of unparalleled opportunity
and prosperity -- not a single one could artilculate even a vague notion
of what was we were defending. All agreed it had to be defended, but
none had a clue what would help on the home front. Except this: we were
being told, in emphatic terms, that that the thing we were defending and
the way to defend it were one and the same; we were the great globalized
Republic of Buying Stuff, and we should bravely go on buying stuff to
protect our right -- our most basic, most cherished right -- to buy more
stuff.
We will never know just how great an opportunity was lost, how much
passionate momentum squandered. Here were the people of virtually the
entire world rising as one, ready to sacrifice, wanting to help. Who
knows how many oversights could have been corrected, inequalities
eliminated, hypocrisies inverted? Who knows what glorious civilization
could have emerged from the ashes of those towers? One thing is for
certain: our national leaders on that day failed us completely --
particularly those of the United States. America's primacy of place and
supremacy of power in world affairs, be they economic, political,
military or cultural, has never been more apparent than in the wake of
September 11, when, as if in some half-witted Hollywood movie, the whole
world looked to its leaders for direction. And was told to go shopping.
*snip*
The passionate intensity of the perpertrators of the September 11
attacks collides with the passionate intensity of the architects of the
"war on terror," and in the anarchic din of the collision there is no
insight, no dawning awareness, no new direction pointing to a place
where these collisions are no longer possible. Tragically, the one
piece of oratory that truly resonated with the American public after
September 11 had no wisdom in it at all. It was merely a captain's
order: full speed ahead. It was a line President Bush borrowed from a
regular-guy-turned-hero on one of the incinerated airplanes, a line
that's closer to Nike's "Just Do It" tagline than to anything Lincoln
ever said: "Let's roll." In the age of market populism, an ersatz ad
slogan is apparently the most we can hope for. After all, Mr. Burns is
the man in charge, and he's far too busy by now with war profiteering to
offer us anything more substantial.
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