15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
vintage Dave, October 9, 2001
Okay, I admit that I'm one of the hardy few who has read EVERY Dave Barry book. Even his weaker books are funny. This happens to be one of the classics. I read it straight through while sitting at a local bookstore. Although almost every page had something that made me laugh; by far the funniest section was his re-writing of our Constitution complete with fake amendments (number 8 was intentionally left blank). This is Barry at his comic best. He also has some funny bits on the Clintons (referring to the boring White House tour he points out tha that you only see the furniture -- oh, what furniture since Hillary and Bill took everything with them). This pseudo history and hilarious send up of Washington is a winner from start to finish. And Dave Barry is not making some of this up. And I'm not his fan just because I happened to have attended the very same middle school Barry did in Armonk, New York.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dave Barry--Going Through a P.J. O'Rourke Phase?, October 10, 2001
I was leaving the library last night and noticed a new Dave Barry title hanging on the new books rack, so I had to pick the thing up. I was not disappointed.
I must confess that I've been a long-time Barry fan, but I last purchased "Book of Bad Songs." As great a series of columns as that turned out to be, the book itself was pretty much bunk. Not the case this time. This book, thankfully, was not column rehashes.
Barry has long been considered a Libertarian, and this book makes a good case for it. The first two chapters have the worst elements of a lackluster Barry book, like too many footnotes and a string of jokes that form no real coherent narrative. But the book's bright spots are on the horizon: Barry bashes the government.
He gives good statistics and charts, believe it or not. He even admits that it's basically his (updated and inferior) version of P.J. O'Rourke's _Parliament of Whores_. He shines with proposals that candidates be injected with massive amounts of truth serum and forced to dress NASCAR-style, with sponsor's logos on their suits. The best section is the one in which he argues that South Florida should be expelled from the Union. Besides a hilarious look at why South Floridians do not know how to vote, he absolutely skewers Fidel Castro and the liberal establishment's coddling of him.
If you're familiar with O'Rourke, you'll probably love Dave Barry's attempt at writing a P.J. book. Even P.J. would like it, since he's complained before that he hates going on book tours with Barry, since he's nowhere near as funny. Five stars without the first two plodding chapters, four stars with them.
Incidentally, O'Rourke has a new book out as well. October is being kind to me this year.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarity wins the election, June 23, 2002
There are no dangling, pregnant, or dimpled chads -- Dave Barry's "Hits Below the Beltway" has won the election. After many years of pokes and prods at our ripe-for-ridicule government, Barry strikes out with an all-new and very funny book.
After an amusing dedication to his kids -- because they will someday pay his Social Security -- Dave launches into his giant-zucchini-ridden explanation of government, how it originated in ancient times. Then he goes on to the early United States ("Whereas in the course of human events it behooves us, the people, not to ask, What can our country do for us anyway? but rather, whether we have anything to fear but fear itself, so that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people may be one nation under God, who art in heaven...") and a heavily edited version of the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law regulating the capacity of toilets").
Then he switches to the present, where he explains things like the Republicans and Democrats and why they are radically different, the different departments like the Department of Education (which goes up in size as human stupidity grows), and then to Washington itself; he goes over its history, Capitol Hill, the pointiest thing in Washington (the Washington Monument), the White House, and the Mall. Then Dave proceeds to what everyone wants to hear about: Presidential elections. He examines the different ways of trying to get a candidate elected, such as nominating a loser; and then he examines several political figures, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, John F. Kennedy, John Glenn, and so forth. He also proposes some risky yet satisfying measures, such as giving candidates doses of sodium pentothal and forcing them to wear donor logos.
And what book on modern politics would be complete without coverage of the farcical 2000 presidential election? Dave revels in the idiocy of the situation before proposing that Florida be ejected from the United States. There is a bit of a subject deviation at that point, where he spends many pages describing the diverse and insane anti-paradise known as Florida. And then it's back to the 2000 election, and the very rainy inauguration of George W. Bush.
Readers may be inclined to hesitate when they see that this is a book about the government and politics, but there is no reason to be. If Dave Barry has any political preferences, they aren't evident in this book. He has a certain bipartisan manner of writing, in that he spoofs both major parties and small ones as well. Though the giant zucchini joke may get old fast, his writing is hilarious as ever; few of his jokes have been featured in columns or previous books.
Dave Barry is as funny as ever, every bit as able to amuse and entertain. If you laughed at the commentators during the 2000 elections and wondered why it is the Department of Education doesn't accomplish anything, then this book is very much for you...
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