Satire in the Summertime (or Any Time)

I would certainly recommend Christopher Buckley as offering a wealth of wonderful summer reading. His books, "Boomsday", "Little Green Men", "Supreme Courtship" and "No Way to Treat A 1st Lady" are some of the best of American political satire. He makes me laugh out loud, and with charm and wit consistently lampoons the absurdities of our social and political systems.
"In the afterglow of Mr. Buckley's jokes, even the morning's headlines seem comic."
(Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "The New York Times"), and thank god for that. We can all use
a regular dose of Christopher Buckley!

--Linda

Christopher talking about American satire:




BOOMSDAY'S heroine is Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger who incites massive political turmoil when, outraged over mounting Social Security debt, she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of her outraged peers ("Generation Whatever") and an ambitious Senator seeking to gain the youth vote in his presidential campaign.
With the help of Washington's greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (they call it "Transitioning") all the way to the White House, over the forceful objections of the Religious Right and, of course, Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.

President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill A Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the guts to reject her -- Judge Pepper Cartwright, the star of the nation's most popular reality show, Courtroom Six.

Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman.

Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule.

Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, the ambitious First Lady of the United States (and known in the tabloids as “Lady Bethmac”), is on trial for the death of her philandering husband, and the only man who can save her is the boyfriend she jilted in law school—now the most shameless defense attorney in America. Published to rave reviews, No Way to Treat a First Lady is a hilariously warped love story for our time set in the funniest place in America: Washington, D.C.

The strange land of Washington, D.C., is teeming with aliens, politicians, and other bizarre life-forms. Beltway insider and stuffy talk show host John Oliver Banion finds his privileged life turned topsy-turvy when he is abducted by aliens from his exclusive country-club golf course. When he is abducted a second time, he believes he has found his true calling and, in the most pasionate crusade of his life, demands that Congress and the White House seriously investigate the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs. Friends and family, meanwhile, urge Banion to seek therapy before his reputation is ruined for good.

A comic tour de force from "one of the best and surest political humorists in America" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Little Green Men is an uproacious comedy of manners that proves once and for all that the truth is out there. Way out there.