F.U.B.A.R: America's Right-Wing Nightmare and How You Can Wake Up From It

In this manifesto, which is occasionally hilarious but more often stale diatribe, Air America radio's Seder and Sherrill have increased the scope of liberal rage to not only our elected leadership, but all those who elected him—the "Rapture Right" as the authors dub them. To read this volume, which uses sarcasm as its main analytical tool, one would think the American right was composed solely of born-again Christians. And that take would indeed justify the title of the book, which is a military acronym meaning "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition." But devoting more than 40 pages (albeit funny ones) to problems plaguing gay Republicans, for example, seems excessive. Where the authors' blistering irony works best, paradoxically, is in the chapter "The Media Is Not Your Friend": the authors discuss in particular the New York Times 's Adam Nagourney ("If you want to see why the liberal media is... not liberal") and columnist Thomas Friedman ("what he's really writing about is Tom Friedman"). And here the authors hammer home their best point: the need for so-called "objectivity," which translates as the need to present both sides of an argument, no matter how patently inane. (June)