Oh. My. You have almost surely seen this by now, but — if not — do not want to miss Jon Stewart’s rejoinder to Sean Hannity, in re the Cliven Bundy stuff. (The patriot cattleman who won’t pay his grazing fees and doesn’t recognize the United States government.) It starts a minute into the show. I just wish Bundy had kept his musings on “the Negro” to himself so Republican senators could have continued to rally around him. What better illustration of their knee-jerk antipathy to a government of, for, and by the people (should the people, for example, want to collect grazing fees on their land; or regulate polluters and financial predators; or enjoy a system of universal health insurance like every other modern nation in the world). Don’t get me started. Just enjoy the clip. It’s really funny.
#
And while we’re skewering fools and blowhards, do you remember my friend Zac Bissonnette?
(He’s probably not going to like the sound of that, but hold on.)
I got to write the foreword to his first best-seller, Debt-Free U, now in its 9th printing . . . copy-edited his second, How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents (I take odd jobs on the side to make ends meet) . . . and note tomorrow’s publication of his third, Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong.
It’s funny and slightly informative (so that’s what happened to “chainsaw Al” Dunlap): a short self-help quote on one page opposite an ironic thumbnail bio of the advice-giver, who’s generally off in prison someplace.
Some of the advice in the book might even prove helpful — at least “as much as any other collection of self-help quotes,” Zac says — “as long as you can follow it better than the people who gave it.”
Like Ernest C. Garlington, author of Roots of a Man: 7 Principles for Growing Strong And Powerful, who offers Christian principles of anti-violence but spent $30,000 on a hit man and now resides (for a term of 33 years) in a secure facility in Connecticut.
You know what may be the best self-help advice? Just do what you know you should do. Or not — it’s up to you.*
Now: go watch that Jon Stewart clip. Free, funny, and — because there are sitting United States senators and presidential candidates who actually see Bundy and his armed supporters as patriots — important.
*I never took est, but from what I learned of it from so many friends back then who did, that was pretty much it.
