“There Goes My Social Life” is a wonderful revelation of the independence and common sense of Stacey Dash. Ms. Dash and her collaborator Nancy French do an excellent job of combining Ms. Dash’s life experiences with political and economic lessons learned. Although Ms. Dash has not attended college, she is an intelligent woman who has learned many lessons the hard way. She is also a voracious reader who reads Ayn Rand and, commendably, has embraced much of her libertarianism but none of her atheism.
The title is a clever play on words from perhaps Ms. Dash’s most memorable line from her most memorable movie. For people like me who have not seen the movie, it is helpful that she inserts the background behind this line into the book. It is redundant to insert it twice.
All 13 chapters start with relevant quotes from respected thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington Carver and Winston Churchill. These quotes help put the chapters into context and to show the importance of the issues.
The event that led to Ms. Dash becoming a conservative spokesperson was her tweet of support for Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign. Before she processed this tweet, she went to church to pray. The world would be a better place if more people prayed before expressing themselves on social media.
This book contains many examples of Ms. Dash advocating conservative principles such as limited government and capitalism. She praises Republicans for understanding that the big government solutions advocated by Democrats usually do not work and frequently make problems worse. For example, she is very critical of the War on Drugs and other programs that add to the national debt. But she appropriately takes Republicans to task for a number of issues, including the No Child Left Behind Act implemented by Republicans during the George W. Bush administration. And in Chapter 4 she does not use the term hypocrite, but she essentially (and accurately) argues that Republicans need to be less hypocritical on issues of sexual misconduct in order to overcome the Democrats’ misleading “War on Women” attack.
Ms. Dash delivers many good lines in this book, but my favorite is her response to a British friend who does not seem to understand economics and accuses her of having a “Disney movie” perspective. Her priceless response is “You can’t tell the difference between Mickey Mouse and Margaret Thatcher.”
This book makes extensive use of the f-dud and other feeble language. I do not find these words offensive in a shocking way; I find them offensive in a depressing way. They are the most overused words in the English language and are generally used by lazy authors who cannot think of clever, creative or definitive ways to express themselves. For example, one sentence refers to Stephen “bleeping" Baldwin. The “bleeping” is as necessary to that sentence as sunglasses to a bat. I normally reduce my assessments for books that rely heavily on “four letter words” by one point. Because of Ms. Dash’s background – frequent exposure to this type of communication and lack of college – I considered giving Ms. Dash a pass. But, on further consideration, the last thing Ms. Dash would want would be for me to give her a pass.
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
