Tag: Politics
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A Wry Ode to Clusterf***ing
Joyless House posted this generous review of Two Pumps for the Body Man. See what else they’re reviewing with a click on the image. “…Two Pumps is a page-turner, baby, and it takes some real balls to satirize the great Christian crusade of our times.” Two Pumps is set in the Royal Kingdom of Saudi…
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Wiggle Room and Windmills for the Democrats
Having re-cast the 2016 Republican presidential contenders as their literary counterparts, I’m taking a look at the Democrats. Hillary Let’s keep gender out of this. Gender—like all demographic attributes—neither qualifies nor disqualifies a candidate for my vote. It would be just as sexist to vote for HRC because she is a woman as it would be not to vote for her because is…
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Review: Foreign Service Fiction
Anyone who thinks diplomacy is about choosing the right fork at the right time should think again and read James O’Callaghan’s clever satire No Circuses (Tacchino Press, 2015). Forget preconceived notions of dinner-party diplomacy: keeping one’s elbows off the table, tangoing the rival into submission, and writing it up the next day in communiqués to DC. What diplomacy’s really about, in O’Callaghan’s world,…
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Review–Does Harry Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Marquis de Sade comedy hour? Adolf Hitler touching base with his inner child? A casual discussion of pillage and plunder with Genghis Kahn and Attila the Hun? John Altson’s Does Harry Dream of Electric Sheep? An Adult Social Satire really can lighten any subject. At its core, Altson’s book is a fun riff on Jonathan…
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In Which I “Interview” Jon Stewart
Good morning, Jon. Thank you for being here this morning. Thank you for having me. I didn’t know you also did morning programs. Actually, I think I just stayed up too late. What time is it? Let’s get right to it, shall we? After 17 years of attacking the schmucks in the media and in government, there…
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The Romney-Palin Ticket
What if W. Mitt Romney is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016? And what if Sarah Palin joins the race? What if Mittens chooses Palin as his running mate? I give you their chit-chat: Palin: Who hijacked the term ‘Feminist’? A cackle of radicals who want to crucify other women with whom they disagree. M: I went to…
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Shortlisted for International Book Prize
The Dundee International Book Prize announced their short list for 2014. Sea Never Dry, my novel about dirty cops and drug trafficking in West Africa, made the list. Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the Ghanaian orphans turning a buck on Accra’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and…
Ben East Books 