I was feeling pretty burned out on politics tonight. I caught a little of Jane Hamsher ranting on MSNBC and popped by our friend Jamelle's blog and found this post also dealing with our own little left wing crack up -- but Jamelle's title was so much better than my crude admonition of the other day to my fellow lefties -- "Sanctimony is a Force that Gives us Meaning." Priceless. I was really depressed to click on the attached article and find that it was an attack on gutless liberals from the left written by Chris Hedges, author of "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning," a book I recently read and greatly admired. Hedges chides liberals for their sterile posturing then boasts of how when he was going to divinity school at Harvard, he lived in Roxbury and belonged to the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team and hung with the real peeps, while learning to hate them Sandinista loving liberals over in Cambridge. Oy, it's a tiresome piece, written by a guy with issues -- and one who admits to voting for Nader and Cynthia McKinney with no hint of embarrassment, no sense that he is a poseur with a u in it himself.
Anyway, it depressed me because "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning" is actually a pretty incredible book, a reminder that truly good journalism does exist and carries a profound weight. In a nutshell, Hedges trots around the world looking for trouble, finds it, loves/hates it, really understands it, and writes well and insightfully about it. Don't be put off by the tripe I linked to -- the book seems like it was written by a different man. Oh he too is a bit sanctimonious -- but he seems in the book to see his own heart of darkness pretty well too. I recommend it unhesitatingly.
Another book of extraordinary journalism that I would urge you to read is "Methland" by Nick Reding, the depiction of the incredibly devastating impact of methamphetamine in a small Iowa town, a scourge prompted in large part by the incredibly devastating impact of globalization, deunionization, and deindustrialization. Reding doesn't just report -- he really becomes a part of this town, living there for months and getting to know its citizens on a very personal level, including quite a few tweakers. He describes in amazing detail how the meth trade was established and the human and environmental devastation it brings. He also notes its connection to work, particularly the way the drug is used to allow people to work inhuman hours at back breaking, poorly paid jobs. It is, as Reding describes, the most American of drugs. The book is not totally unrelentingly bleak -- there are good people in the community battling the problem and Reding gives us an affectionate, yet fully human rendering of them and their struggles. There even appears to be a glimmer of hope by the end of the book, although one has the sense that these small towns -- always held up as the exemplar of the "real America" -- are critically ill with a poor prognosis.
Anyway, turn off the computer and turn off cable news and pick up either of these volumes and you will be better for it.
I'll try my hand at my most recent fiction read tomorrow, but for now must say goodnight. Tell me what you're reading that is worth the effort.
