Pick a Better Country: An Unassuming Colored Guy Speaks His Mind about America

Denver-based syndicated radio talk-show host Ken Hamblin rides Harleys, flies airplanes and has been called ""the black Rush Limbaugh."" While he has neither provoked the following nor the counterattacks that Limbaugh has, his book--a mix of autobiography and rant--shows both the strengths and weaknesses of conservative talk radio. Citing his personal experience growing up on welfare in Brooklyn, Hamblin offers himself as living proof that poverty need not preclude personal responsibility or be used as an excuse for not seeking advancement. Similarly, he excoriates white liberals and black leaders for extolling rap music and the street argot of underclass culture. He calls that culture ""black trash,"" a term he justifies as a racial counterpart to the more common ""white trash."" Hamblin's other memorable terms are talk-radio pejoratives: ""brood mares"" for teen welfare mothers; ""egg-sucking dog liberals"" for white liberals who ally with black ""poverty pimps"" to hobble blacks' sense of self-reliance. Unfortunately, Hamblin's political analysis is talk-radio shallow, made up of self-help bromides, pep-rally exhortations about the American dream and mud pies flung at liberals' ""socialist"" agenda and the alleged personal failings of welfare recipients. Hamblin offers volume--but no serious reflection on the forces creating the underclass. Author tour. (Oct.)