Global Village Idiot: Dubya, Dunces, and One Last Word Before You Vote - Softcover

O'Farrell, John

3.45

120 ratings by Goodreads

9780802140388: Global Village Idiot: Dubya, Dunces, and One Last Word Before You Vote

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802140386 ISBN 13: 9780802140388

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003

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Winner of the Best Columnist of the Year at the British Liars' Awards and Britain's finest satirist, O'Farrell takes dead aim in Global Village Idiot at cell phones, awards ceremonies, genetic sheep splicers, America's right wing cabal of dunces, dunderheads, dimwits, and the Big 'D' himself. "Just when we thought the lawlessness in Iraq was over," O'Farrell observes, "even more blatant incidents of looting have begun. With handkerchiefs masking their faces, two rioters roughly the height of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld kicked in the gates of the largest oilfield and grabbed the keys of the gasoline trucks. 'Yee-haw! It's all ours! Millions of barrels of the stuff' they laughed. 'Yup!' added the leader ' and this mask guarantees my anonymousinity!' So after all these years there really is such a person as the Thief of Baghdad. Except strangely his accent sounded vaguely Texan." A writer for the groundbreaking television show Spitting Image and contributor to the screenplay for the hit movie Chicken Run, O'Farrell meticulously researched his conclusions "by spending five minutes on the internet and then giving up." And while O'Farrell's sharpest barbs and stingers have often been written to come out of the mouths of grotesque puppets and Claymation chickens, this time around he keeps the best lines for himself: ''With the election of the 43rd President of the United States, the global village is complete," O'Farrell writes. "'It has its own global village idiot.'"

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Review:

The title of John O'Farrell's latest book, Global Village Idiot, refers not to the author, who proves far from an idiot, but to President George W Bush, whose trip to Europe in June 2001 closes this compendium of absurdly funny, journalistic pummellings. Sadly, subsequent events may now result in only edgy laughter at the witticism. In an age of ubiquitous but low-cal humour, John O'Farrell is that old-fashioned diamond, a gags man unable to write a dull line. In this, he plies a trade of satire and whimsy that combines the best of British working-men's clubs with the quick-fire, dime-a-joke New York patter that relies on fresh rather than canned humour.

Collecting 1000-word comment pieces, mainly from The Guardian and The Independent, Global Village Idiot reveals an irreverently relevant look at British and world news at the turn of the century. O'Farrell, the author of Things Can Only Get Better, a memoir of 18 grim years as a Labour Party activist ruined by the 1997 General Election triumph, and the comic novel, The Best a Man Can Get, distinguishes his soapbox pennyworths by an affirming sense of belief, and moral consequence. He may poke fun at Bush, New Labour, boarding-school parents, hopping across the wasteland of television "choice", Euro-sceptics, SAS novelists and paternity leave; he even piles further comic indignities onto Neil Hamilton and Mohammed al Fayed, despite their own high standards on that score. Yet behind the wisecracks, and consistently high chortle factor, lies more serious intent. To laugh is to be alive to the disgraces, anomalies, hypocrisies, skulduggery and double standards of modern life that impel socio-political satirists such as O'Farrell to write with such consistent pinging accuracy. Perhaps the biggest compliment is to say that if today's news is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper, then somehow O'Farrell makes delightful macram� from it. And who knows, an article a day may help keep the spin-doctors at bay. --David Vincent

Review:

"* 'Very funny' The Times on Things Can Only Get Better. * 'Very funny' Griff Rhys Jones on Things Can Only Get Better. * 'Downright funny' Nick Hancock on Things Can Only Get Better.

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