Summer Reading

Posted by Paulette Simpson

Posted: July 31, 2009 - 10:15 am

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Visits to family in Southern California usually end with my mother putting me on the plane with limes, Locatelli and a stack of Los Angeles Times’ book review sections. The backyard limes are for gin & tonics, the Locatelli Romano is for pasta and the book reviews help pass the time on the trip back to Juneau.

I’ve never had time to read a fraction of those books but I like knowing what’s out there. And it was a column in the left-leaning LA Times by Andrew Klavan (“The Big White Lie”) that led me to City Journal. City Journal is a quarterly magazine published by the Manhattan Institute whose mission is to, “develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.”

When the New York Times hired Bill Kristol as a columnist, there was an article in City Journal about the travesty titled, “No Conservatives, Dammit!!” Written by Harry Stein, it was about how the “…illiberal liberals went nuts” when the neo-con Kristol was invited into the Gray Lady’s lair. Kristol’s tenure at the Times lasted little more than a year - but I digress.

Harry Stein is a graduate of Pomona College and Columbia School of Journalism. He wrote the book How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace). His latest book was published in June. It’s titled I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug, and Terminally Self-Righteous.

Stein isn’t the first to describe the increasing intolerance of some on the left. In her 1990 book, What I Saw at the Revolution, Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan titled her first chapter, “I Am Often Booed Because of Who My Friends Are.” Like Stein (and Michael Medved in Right Turns), Noonan documents her transformation from liberal to conservative and further notes that she is “an opportunity for liberals to show how broad-minded they are.”

I haven’t read Stein’s survival guide but skimmed the reviews on Amazon. The most favorably rated is titled, “Putting a humorous face on something getting ever less funny.” There’s another good review by Robert VerBruggen in National Review Online that concludes with, “If you’re in the minority, whether that means you belong to the NRA or the Sierra Club, all you can do is cowboy up — or clam up.”

Depending on where you live or where you dare to share your opinions, if you lean right and want to join the conversation, it’s often a good idea to stiffen your spine before you hit send, submit or open your mouth. And every now and then, turn off the talk radio and pick up a book or a newspaper. You never know what you might find - even in the ADN.

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