Judge, a contributing writer to the New York Press, devotes this slim volume to his transition from a leftist liberal to a radical, right-wing, swing-dancing polemicist. He identifies the two blinding lights of his conversion experience as reading Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and his first swing dance. Through these encounters, he explains, he realized the emptiness of the current promiscuous rock'n'roll culture and wistfully looks for a return to a Leave It to Beaver America. In these meandering pages, Judge counterpoises the male chivalry of the swing dance revival with Bill Clinton's philandering, which he uses to condemn the hypocrisy of liberalism and the bankruptcy of a feminism that encourages disrespect. He also overstates the importance of swing to the emergence of rock'n'roll and bludgeons the reader with Elvis Presley's much-documented connection to the church. Displaying little knowledge or understanding of past or current American culture, Judge presents a sophomoric, opinionated diatribe that offers little to any reader.DDave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The Wall Street Journal
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