Live from Middle America: Rants from a Red-State Comedian

Stine believes sex is "designed for one man and one woman who have promised it to no one else for the rest of their lives." He says "our kids are weak" because they've grown up in cars with seatbelts and airbags, played on padded playgrounds and used helmets when bike riding. He thinks university professors "are usually too gutless to live among adults in the real world and instead prefer to have their egos stroked by eighteen-year-olds who've been manipulated into thinking they're geniuses." He's also of the mind that "everyone's a bigot" and that there's nothing "inherently negative" about the term. Readers who agree will feel right at home with Stine, a Hillary-heckling, anti-intellectual, America-first conservative. Although Stine bills himself as a comedian, his ideological mission clouds his humor. Maybe if he weren't so nasty—criticizing "stewardesses" (he insists on his right to call them that) for not retiring before they're old and unattractive, haranguing African-Americans for using different terms over the decades to refer to themselves—he might seem harmless enough, but there's something ugly here and it isn't that mature flight attendant. (Apr.)