Republican Like Me: Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass, and Blue-Suit America

Though Leon compares his mission of going undercover to infiltrate the ""Bush-loving extreme Right"" to Black Like Me and the work of anthropologist Jane Goodall, a more apropos comparison would be to Beavis and Butthead or some of the stunts featured on Jackass. In these 31 essays, Leon sloppily paints abortion protestors, private security companies, white supremacists, the press, the FBI and anyone who isn't from ""Northern California, the land of the peace-loving, true BLUE liberal,"" with a brush wider than the trailers he assumes most of his ""subjects"" have crawled out from under. The writing on display here is at turns abominable and cliched, and nearly always unfunny-spastic, juvenile locker room banter disguised as daring commentary. His ""infiltrations""-volunteering for the Schwarzenegger, Bush and Kerrey campaigns; joining abortion protestors; having dinner with a group of suburban white supremacists at an Applebees; working at a security guard at an Oakland Denny's; participating in an FBI-sponsored media luncheon-amount to little more than a disparate array of set-ups for Leon to act like a 12-year-old buzzed on too much caffeine: after working the phones as a San Francisco-based Bush volunteer, for instance, Leon writes, ""For no apparent reason, in black Magic Marker I scrawl the words 'Bush Wears Panties!' in the middle of the phone list and leave."" Leon's inspiration may have been noble, but the result is so asinine it's hard to imagine liberals will want to claim him as one of their own.