Insane Clown President
By: Matt Taibbi / Narrated By: Rob Shapiro
Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
Listened to it; now I’m ready for a bleach dip…
It seems I just can’t go an entire week of Listening without coming upon an audiobook where I wanna throttle someone.
Enter Insane Clown President by Matt Taibbi, wherein one will wish to throttle just about EVERYONE.
This is a collection of articles of following Trump as he bellowed and blundered his way through the 2016 Presidential Campaign, and after all was said and done, only Bernie Sanders came out seeming sane. …which is a trifle scary… no offense to Mr. Sanders…
And lemme just get narrator Rob Shapiro’s performance outta the way here. He’s a veteran narrator, many credits to his name, and I dunno if it means he did a great job, but I certainly lost what oh so little shreds of respect I had for ANYone in that his delivery conveys ennui when people should’ve been vigilant, hilarity when people should’ve been crying, even vindictive joy when people should’ve been ashamed.
This’ll be a short review as we’ve been wallowing in the muck and mire for yeeeeears now, and things have only devolved, it’s all been pondered and re-pondered, there’s nary an I’m Sorry or That Was A Mistake in sight. Do I really have to get into Trump making fun of a handicapped journalist? Do I really have to get into the taped interview where he says he grabs women by the p**sy?
Seriously?
Do I have to get into what a feckless lot the Republican candidates were? Of how the tone shifted swiftly and crazily, of how the more outrageous a claim was, the better the candidate’s poll numbers? Do I have to get into how morally corrupt the Democrats and the National Committee were/became?
But mostly what wound up ticking me off was the Press. Taibbi cynically writes of Journalist Drinking Games for nights of the Republican debates. When it’s like: Y’all shut up and do your freaking jobs. He writes of how the tried and true process of campaigning was of candidates messing up, greatly or slightly, and having to kowtow to the Press, hat in hand, cringing and flinching. And how the Press would then gang up, beat the candidate down (And don’t EVEN start me on what they did to Howard Dean! I was a T-shirt owning “Dean-iac” at the time!!!).
Such inCREDible hubris! It was hard to listen to this. And whoulda thunk it, but my mom chose this as the pick for our little audiobook club. Let me tell you, that was probably one of our more volatile idea-swapping/vent sessions, and I think all three of us went away from the whole thing thoroughly disheartened.
So very well-done for Taibbi, it’s just that it seems like way too little faaaaar too late.
And I’ll ask ya: Ya reeeeally wanna live through all this again? Cuz me? I’m ready to scrub the top layer of my skin off as I’ll never feel clean again.
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