Death to All Cheerleaders : One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity [Paperback]

Marty Beckerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2000

Adolescent culture in America has degenerated to an all-time low. Fickle pretensions, capricious brand name loyalties and plain old idiocy are infesting high schools throughout the nation more now than ever before.

But 17-year-old Alaskan humorist Marty Beckerman has risen like a phoenix from the sordid ashes of his generation. Utilizing a vicious wit and incredible gift for the heartless ridicule of others, Beckerman shows in "Death to All Cheerleaders" just how much greater the World might be if we were to simply get rid of all its worthless people.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Funny stuff. ... Marty is a very precocious smart-ass with a mean streak of cynicism. -- The New York Press, October 5, 2000

Once the initial shock of Beckerman's profanity and hatred wears off, there are some highly readable and humorous gags. ... Frequently hilarious. -- The Anchorage Daily News, September 29, 2000

About the Author

Marty Beckerman is a teenage humorist living in tropical Anchorage, Alaska. His award-winning columns appeared between 1998 and 2000 in The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper. It should be noted that Beckerman was forever banished from the Anchorage Daily News after asking a cheerleader how it feels to be a urine stain on the toilet seat of America -- a question, as it turns out, neither the cheerleader nor Beckerman's editor found particularly amusing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: The Author] (September 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970062907
• ISBN-13: 978-0970062901
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,650,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sophomoric Writings, December 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Death to All Cheerleaders : One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity (Paperback)

I found the book to be a disappointment. The writing was tedious--no new ideas--just shock value ramblings. A more sophisticated approach would have illuminated contemporary social mores. The concepts presented are mundane and do not reflect authentic social criticism. The book has no intellectual value, no literary value and above all offers no actual social commentary.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Patchy at best., March 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Death to All Cheerleaders : One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity (Paperback)

To be perfectly honest, this book isn't very good. The writing and research on some, though not all, of the peices shows a certain amount of promise, and to someone who never really fit in with their contemporaries as an adolescent (like me) there is plenty to identify with (in theory at least), but the style and extremelyvarying degree of insight is off putting. Marty is clearly intelligent and interested in what he perceives as social commentary, but to me a lot of his critiques descend to the level of loud mouthed, egotistical ranting, tinged with blue language (which isn't something I'm particularly opposed to) in order maybe to lend his opinions some gravitas. However his attitude fails to carry much of his message; a lot of it comes off like a teenaged Denis Leary i.e. noisy and seemingly relevant, but actually pretty hollow and pointless. Someone else in this review list (it might be the guy beneath me) seems to actually know Marty, and his claim that the book was self published is interesting. I didn't know this, but now I do, if it's true, it explains a lot. Almost every teenaged outsider fills their mind with drivel for most of the time and convinces themselves that they are better and more worthwhile than their peers simply because they are different. It doesn't take a special kind of arrogance to assume that your teenage ramblings actually have any real merit, and anything worthwhile to contribute (mine certainly never did), but it does take a special kind of blindness to follow through and publish essays on the art of angst whose only real saving grace is the unintentional inshight they provide into the mind of the author. Marty will go far, when he curbs his feigned outrages.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Joy of Distaste, January 11, 2004

By 

"mr_harrolds" (Greenpoint) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death to All Cheerleaders : One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity (Paperback)

Marty Beckerman is an angry young man and he takes great glee, going off on the sacred cows of growing up. It's not exactly what you'd call uplifting, but Family Ties had that market cornered, and honesty is funnier than schmaltz.