Book-It '10! Book #70
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Dirty Sexy Politics by Meghan Mccain
Details: Copyright 2010, Hyperion
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Meghan McCain came to prominence as the straight-talking, forward-thinking daughter of the 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. And her profile has only risen since the election ended in favor of the other guy.
What makes Meghan so appealing? As a new role model for young, creative, and vocal members of the GOP, she's unafraid to mix it up and speak her mind. In Dirty Sexy Politics she takes a hard look at the future of her party. She doesn't shy away from serious issues, and her raucous humor and down-to-earth style keep her positions accessible.
In this witty, candid, and boisterous book, Meghan takes us deep behind the scenes of the campaign trail. She steals campaign signs in New Hampshire, tastes the nightlife in Nashville, and has a strange encounter with Laura and Jenna Bush at the White House. Along the way, she falls in love with America-- while seeing how far the Republican Party has veered from its core values of freedom, honestly, and individuality. In Dirty Sexy Politics, Meghan McCain gives us a true insider's account of life on a campaign trail."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It looked vaguely interesting and there was much hype over McCain finally discussing her father's choice for VP.
How I Liked It: To say McCain is indecisive about many issues effecting this book isn't quite right. "Wishy-washy" is a much more apt term for it.
To begin, she unevenly straddles the line between political manifesta and personal memoir. Of course it's possible to do a book with both; most political figures that take to book writing do. But she can't find a way to integrate the two smoothly (or even less choppily) and it makes for a similarly jumbled throughout most of the book.
McCain talks about a different kind of GOP, one returning to what McCain believes to be its base principles. And yet she spouts many of the favorite talking points of the current GOP: worship of Ronald Reagan, support for the war in Iraq, "pro-life", small government. She also manages to reiterate the favorite old Obama-bashes, the "Obama bail-outs" (conveniently forgetting that they started under Bush), the idea that he was "the most liberal presidential candidate possible in the last election" (perhaps compared to the Republicans?), and that the media was "100 percent Team Obama" (apparently the hours McCain claims to have logged watching the news networks somehow missed the amount of time devoted to Reverend Wright, ACORN, Bill Ayers, and Obama's supposedly "Muslim past" and I am not referring to only FOX News). The idea that John McCain is a "maverick" who stuck to his guns is not so much forgivable as dismissible, given the source. Although McCain's delusions of her father choosing the "classy route" by the campaign "not hitting Obama hard enough, particularly his ties to Reverend Wright and ACORN," (pg 142) get especially ridiculous. True, John McCain made a point (unlike the Clintons) to not touch Reverend Wright (more likely due to the fact McCain had cozied up to a beacon of hatred he'd previously denounced, Jerry Falwell), something Palin "went rouge" on several interviews about during the campaign, but McCain's seizing upon Bill Ayers (whom the younger McCain omits from her father's choice of topics he's too classy to hit Obama about) including Palin's notorious "pals around with terrorists" remark, is smear enough to bring down any topic he might have avoided to "stay above the fray".
McCain speaks about the stress and genuine difficulty of being a "daughter of" and a political prop, but she cuts most of her fellow "daughters of" no slack whatsoever. Before she meets Jenna Bush, she envisions them "sharing blush brands", but ultimately dismisses her as a spoiled, largely untouchable princess (Jenna is unaware that the White House contains a "mess" for dining and departs early with her fiancee, whom McCain describes as a "guy with a smooth look and manner, pretty much what you'd expect from a Maryland tobacco heir", pg 78), and the then-First Lady as a cool, distracted ("[T]here was no doubt in my mind that, for Mrs. Bush, this was just one more meeting she had to take during the day," pg 78), not terribly friendly woman with questionable manners (a snafu arises when it becomes apparent the staff thought only Cindy McCain would be dining with the First Lady and not enough room was made). At the end of the chapter devoted to her meeting the Bushes, McCain expresses the hope that they won't be angry with her for "dishing" but notes her resolve to use Taylor Swift as a model: "[I]f you don't want her to write a song about you, don't give her a reason." (pg 82)
With Chelsea Clinton, McCain is about as kind but has considerably less material to work with. In comparison to her own level of fame at the time of the campaign, she sniffs at Clinton for being a "major celebrity who declined to participate in all interviews, or even talk to a ten-year-old reporter for Scholastic" (pg 91) and even her appearance at the Democratic convention in which McCain notes what an excellent job Clinton did in introducing her mother, McCain quickly backhands with noting she looked "almost spookily calm" (pg 118).
She's kinder to her fellow "daughters of" that participate with her in a CBS special, but mostly to berate herself in what feels like mock self-deprecation for looking and sounding like she was "straight of out a mall in Scottsdale" (pg 93). Of course, the most attention is devoted to her interactions with the Palin children, predictably Bristol. While McCain feels sympathy for what she describes as the poor shellshocked girl with a blanket clumsily over her stomach (to hide her then still unannounced pregnancy), she fumes over the attention lavished on Bristol post-make-over session which McCain felt glamorized Bristol's and thus all teen pregnancy. I won't go into the more recent shots, of varying levels of fairness, that McCain has taken at Bristol, as they aren't included in this book.
And the Palins. McCain knows her market. The first two chapters are devoted to McCain going insane by not knowing her father's pick for veep and her own speculations and hopes. McCain knows what we're waiting for: for her to finally unleash the torrent of frustration, rage, disgust, and whatever else she's got against Palin. It doesn't come until nearly the end when McCain feels Palin upstages her father at his own concession speech and McCain realizes that for Palin, losing this particular election is only a beginning. But in the meantime, she fumes over how much attention is given to Palin's whole family, including Levi Johnston (most curiously and perhaps disturbingly, she reveals that her parents offered to be godparents to Bristol and Johnston's child, an offer not so much refused as ignored), and especially little seven-year-old Piper, who unseats McCain of a chair at the hair-and-make-up stylist. While McCain grumbles about attention spent, she again contradicts herself by complaining of the media attention devoted to the RNC's controversial decision to spend $150,000 to outfit the Palin family.
“They needed clothes, no doubt. What they'd arrived with, in their bags from Alaska, just wasn't going to hold up in the harsh light of a national election. Look at the unbelievable focus that Michelle Obama's wardrobe had gotten, with every J. Crew sweater set and sleeveless dress discussed and swooned over.
I wasn't surprised by the price. That's what it costs to outfit seven or eight people in designer clothes. Other candidates had spent just as much, or more, but kept those kinds of expenses under wraps-- sunk into promotion and advertising costs. What surprised me is that our campaign couldn't do the same.” (pg 148)
The contradiction is right there in those two paragraphs, but she manages a dig at the media's supposed gaga fascination with the Obamas (to contrast, the attention that the Palins generated that would eventually knock Obama out of the spotlight, however temporarily, was "curious lust").
Occasionally, McCain's wishy-washiness is outright naive. She discusses the massive flaws with the GOP (primarily its fondness of groupthink and its exclusion of minorities) and then discusses her wonder at the "distasteful" protesters at the GOP convention in 2000 (which, as she helpfully points out, was before the Florida recount, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, "or anything else you want to blame the Bush administration for," pg 117). She gets bonus points for yet another contradiction of "Blame it on Bush" as she herself frequently laments the unpopular Bush administration's effect on her father's campaign. Similarly, when McCain first rails at the press for being "100 percent Team Obama", she derides the entirety of them as having "already made up their minds that all Republicans are uncool or stupid or elitist or racist or whatever." (pg 30) Aside from the fact that it was actually the Republican party and specifically her father's campaign that actively tried to paint Obama as an elitist, much of these are the complaints McCain has with her own party. She complains of her fear of not fitting in for her bleached hair, tattoos, and "edgy clothing", feeling rejected by people like the Romneys and their version of Republicanism.
McCain laments bad behavior (she's eager to fill us in on horrible Obama supporters that harass them after his win on election night) and unethical blogs, yet she relates stealing Romney campaign signs (when questioned, she claims she's with Giuliani's campaign) and gets her mother's hairdresser who physically resembles her to promise to take the blame if the police come around. She and her friends delight on posting unflattering pictures of select members of the press they despise, knowing they'll hate it. She describes a "hilarious" incident of staying at a horrible hotel at a campaign stop and finding half-eaten pizza outside her door. Thinking it belongs to a reporter staying nearby, she and her friends lay eggs outside his door to ruin his shoes and trip him up. Mission accomplished and they're delighted, until her father asks her how she likes the pizza he left for her. Rather than submit to immediate regret at their childish prank gone awry, McCain and her friends find it utterly hilarious. McCain loathes "diva" behavior, but screams at members of her father's staff she personally dislikes when they refuse to reveal her father's pick for veep.
McCain especially trips up on her regular gal persona versus the fact she's a "daughter of" from a distinct lineage, and the former can get especially irritating. What could be more interesting stories of the "backstage" of the McCain campaign get largely lost under McCain's "quirky", "edgy", "girlie girl" persona, a self that sounds poorly focus-grouped through Cathy comics, Sex in the City, and maybe even a dollop of Jean Teasdale. Her professed love of swearing, discussions of "crazy sex", and stream of pop culture references sound nearly as forced as Michael Steele's "street cred". She's the daughter of the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America, but she's more at home with Rock Band, her "girls" (including her Korean friend whose ethnic background McCain feels the need to remind us of since the moment we meet her), and plenty of gossip and girly drinks. She's even got a gay friend, (underscored that he's a member of her staff, her hair-dresser) for whom she apparently feels a personal struggle to speak out against the homophobic political stances of DOMA and DADT.
Better books exist about "behind-the-scenes" ( Game Change for one) and McCain's manifesta for bettering the GOP is available much more accessibly through her column for The Daily Beast.
Notable: McCain describes the last day of her father's campaign, which included a tour of seven different cities (Tampa, Blountville, TN, Moon Township, PA, Indianapolis, Roswell, Henderson, NV, and Prescott, AZ) within a twenty-four hour span.
“But with three more cities, and three more rallies to go, I was exhausted. At one point, while standing in line to get back on the plane, I asked Anna Marie Cox, a Time magazine blogger, if it was normal to do this many events on the last day. "No, Meghan, it's not!" she answered.” (pg 162)
One would think that one of the few members of the press that she actually found useful she would bother to spell her name correctly: Ana Marie Cox.
Title: Dirty Sexy Politics by Meghan Mccain
Details: Copyright 2010, Hyperion
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Meghan McCain came to prominence as the straight-talking, forward-thinking daughter of the 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. And her profile has only risen since the election ended in favor of the other guy.
What makes Meghan so appealing? As a new role model for young, creative, and vocal members of the GOP, she's unafraid to mix it up and speak her mind. In Dirty Sexy Politics she takes a hard look at the future of her party. She doesn't shy away from serious issues, and her raucous humor and down-to-earth style keep her positions accessible.
In this witty, candid, and boisterous book, Meghan takes us deep behind the scenes of the campaign trail. She steals campaign signs in New Hampshire, tastes the nightlife in Nashville, and has a strange encounter with Laura and Jenna Bush at the White House. Along the way, she falls in love with America-- while seeing how far the Republican Party has veered from its core values of freedom, honestly, and individuality. In Dirty Sexy Politics, Meghan McCain gives us a true insider's account of life on a campaign trail."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It looked vaguely interesting and there was much hype over McCain finally discussing her father's choice for VP.
How I Liked It: To say McCain is indecisive about many issues effecting this book isn't quite right. "Wishy-washy" is a much more apt term for it.
To begin, she unevenly straddles the line between political manifesta and personal memoir. Of course it's possible to do a book with both; most political figures that take to book writing do. But she can't find a way to integrate the two smoothly (or even less choppily) and it makes for a similarly jumbled throughout most of the book.
McCain talks about a different kind of GOP, one returning to what McCain believes to be its base principles. And yet she spouts many of the favorite talking points of the current GOP: worship of Ronald Reagan, support for the war in Iraq, "pro-life", small government. She also manages to reiterate the favorite old Obama-bashes, the "Obama bail-outs" (conveniently forgetting that they started under Bush), the idea that he was "the most liberal presidential candidate possible in the last election" (perhaps compared to the Republicans?), and that the media was "100 percent Team Obama" (apparently the hours McCain claims to have logged watching the news networks somehow missed the amount of time devoted to Reverend Wright, ACORN, Bill Ayers, and Obama's supposedly "Muslim past" and I am not referring to only FOX News). The idea that John McCain is a "maverick" who stuck to his guns is not so much forgivable as dismissible, given the source. Although McCain's delusions of her father choosing the "classy route" by the campaign "not hitting Obama hard enough, particularly his ties to Reverend Wright and ACORN," (pg 142) get especially ridiculous. True, John McCain made a point (unlike the Clintons) to not touch Reverend Wright (more likely due to the fact McCain had cozied up to a beacon of hatred he'd previously denounced, Jerry Falwell), something Palin "went rouge" on several interviews about during the campaign, but McCain's seizing upon Bill Ayers (whom the younger McCain omits from her father's choice of topics he's too classy to hit Obama about) including Palin's notorious "pals around with terrorists" remark, is smear enough to bring down any topic he might have avoided to "stay above the fray".
McCain speaks about the stress and genuine difficulty of being a "daughter of" and a political prop, but she cuts most of her fellow "daughters of" no slack whatsoever. Before she meets Jenna Bush, she envisions them "sharing blush brands", but ultimately dismisses her as a spoiled, largely untouchable princess (Jenna is unaware that the White House contains a "mess" for dining and departs early with her fiancee, whom McCain describes as a "guy with a smooth look and manner, pretty much what you'd expect from a Maryland tobacco heir", pg 78), and the then-First Lady as a cool, distracted ("[T]here was no doubt in my mind that, for Mrs. Bush, this was just one more meeting she had to take during the day," pg 78), not terribly friendly woman with questionable manners (a snafu arises when it becomes apparent the staff thought only Cindy McCain would be dining with the First Lady and not enough room was made). At the end of the chapter devoted to her meeting the Bushes, McCain expresses the hope that they won't be angry with her for "dishing" but notes her resolve to use Taylor Swift as a model: "[I]f you don't want her to write a song about you, don't give her a reason." (pg 82)
With Chelsea Clinton, McCain is about as kind but has considerably less material to work with. In comparison to her own level of fame at the time of the campaign, she sniffs at Clinton for being a "major celebrity who declined to participate in all interviews, or even talk to a ten-year-old reporter for Scholastic" (pg 91) and even her appearance at the Democratic convention in which McCain notes what an excellent job Clinton did in introducing her mother, McCain quickly backhands with noting she looked "almost spookily calm" (pg 118).
She's kinder to her fellow "daughters of" that participate with her in a CBS special, but mostly to berate herself in what feels like mock self-deprecation for looking and sounding like she was "straight of out a mall in Scottsdale" (pg 93). Of course, the most attention is devoted to her interactions with the Palin children, predictably Bristol. While McCain feels sympathy for what she describes as the poor shellshocked girl with a blanket clumsily over her stomach (to hide her then still unannounced pregnancy), she fumes over the attention lavished on Bristol post-make-over session which McCain felt glamorized Bristol's and thus all teen pregnancy. I won't go into the more recent shots, of varying levels of fairness, that McCain has taken at Bristol, as they aren't included in this book.
And the Palins. McCain knows her market. The first two chapters are devoted to McCain going insane by not knowing her father's pick for veep and her own speculations and hopes. McCain knows what we're waiting for: for her to finally unleash the torrent of frustration, rage, disgust, and whatever else she's got against Palin. It doesn't come until nearly the end when McCain feels Palin upstages her father at his own concession speech and McCain realizes that for Palin, losing this particular election is only a beginning. But in the meantime, she fumes over how much attention is given to Palin's whole family, including Levi Johnston (most curiously and perhaps disturbingly, she reveals that her parents offered to be godparents to Bristol and Johnston's child, an offer not so much refused as ignored), and especially little seven-year-old Piper, who unseats McCain of a chair at the hair-and-make-up stylist. While McCain grumbles about attention spent, she again contradicts herself by complaining of the media attention devoted to the RNC's controversial decision to spend $150,000 to outfit the Palin family.
“They needed clothes, no doubt. What they'd arrived with, in their bags from Alaska, just wasn't going to hold up in the harsh light of a national election. Look at the unbelievable focus that Michelle Obama's wardrobe had gotten, with every J. Crew sweater set and sleeveless dress discussed and swooned over.
I wasn't surprised by the price. That's what it costs to outfit seven or eight people in designer clothes. Other candidates had spent just as much, or more, but kept those kinds of expenses under wraps-- sunk into promotion and advertising costs. What surprised me is that our campaign couldn't do the same.” (pg 148)
The contradiction is right there in those two paragraphs, but she manages a dig at the media's supposed gaga fascination with the Obamas (to contrast, the attention that the Palins generated that would eventually knock Obama out of the spotlight, however temporarily, was "curious lust").
Occasionally, McCain's wishy-washiness is outright naive. She discusses the massive flaws with the GOP (primarily its fondness of groupthink and its exclusion of minorities) and then discusses her wonder at the "distasteful" protesters at the GOP convention in 2000 (which, as she helpfully points out, was before the Florida recount, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, "or anything else you want to blame the Bush administration for," pg 117). She gets bonus points for yet another contradiction of "Blame it on Bush" as she herself frequently laments the unpopular Bush administration's effect on her father's campaign. Similarly, when McCain first rails at the press for being "100 percent Team Obama", she derides the entirety of them as having "already made up their minds that all Republicans are uncool or stupid or elitist or racist or whatever." (pg 30) Aside from the fact that it was actually the Republican party and specifically her father's campaign that actively tried to paint Obama as an elitist, much of these are the complaints McCain has with her own party. She complains of her fear of not fitting in for her bleached hair, tattoos, and "edgy clothing", feeling rejected by people like the Romneys and their version of Republicanism.
McCain laments bad behavior (she's eager to fill us in on horrible Obama supporters that harass them after his win on election night) and unethical blogs, yet she relates stealing Romney campaign signs (when questioned, she claims she's with Giuliani's campaign) and gets her mother's hairdresser who physically resembles her to promise to take the blame if the police come around. She and her friends delight on posting unflattering pictures of select members of the press they despise, knowing they'll hate it. She describes a "hilarious" incident of staying at a horrible hotel at a campaign stop and finding half-eaten pizza outside her door. Thinking it belongs to a reporter staying nearby, she and her friends lay eggs outside his door to ruin his shoes and trip him up. Mission accomplished and they're delighted, until her father asks her how she likes the pizza he left for her. Rather than submit to immediate regret at their childish prank gone awry, McCain and her friends find it utterly hilarious. McCain loathes "diva" behavior, but screams at members of her father's staff she personally dislikes when they refuse to reveal her father's pick for veep.
McCain especially trips up on her regular gal persona versus the fact she's a "daughter of" from a distinct lineage, and the former can get especially irritating. What could be more interesting stories of the "backstage" of the McCain campaign get largely lost under McCain's "quirky", "edgy", "girlie girl" persona, a self that sounds poorly focus-grouped through Cathy comics, Sex in the City, and maybe even a dollop of Jean Teasdale. Her professed love of swearing, discussions of "crazy sex", and stream of pop culture references sound nearly as forced as Michael Steele's "street cred". She's the daughter of the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America, but she's more at home with Rock Band, her "girls" (including her Korean friend whose ethnic background McCain feels the need to remind us of since the moment we meet her), and plenty of gossip and girly drinks. She's even got a gay friend, (underscored that he's a member of her staff, her hair-dresser) for whom she apparently feels a personal struggle to speak out against the homophobic political stances of DOMA and DADT.
Better books exist about "behind-the-scenes" ( Game Change for one) and McCain's manifesta for bettering the GOP is available much more accessibly through her column for The Daily Beast.
Notable: McCain describes the last day of her father's campaign, which included a tour of seven different cities (Tampa, Blountville, TN, Moon Township, PA, Indianapolis, Roswell, Henderson, NV, and Prescott, AZ) within a twenty-four hour span.
“But with three more cities, and three more rallies to go, I was exhausted. At one point, while standing in line to get back on the plane, I asked Anna Marie Cox, a Time magazine blogger, if it was normal to do this many events on the last day. "No, Meghan, it's not!" she answered.” (pg 162)
One would think that one of the few members of the press that she actually found useful she would bother to spell her name correctly: Ana Marie Cox.