F.U.B.A.R.: America's Right-Wing Nightmare

by Sam Seder, Stephen Sherrill, Janeane Garofalo

Overview

The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America.

This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f&#!$d up beyond all recognition. Wel-come to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report.

If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too).

Along the way, they'll answer your most pressing questions, like:

• I'm gay. Can I still be a Republican?

• Do I need to own my own congressman, or is a time share okay?

• Is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's mustache, in fact, the sign of the Beast?

• I thought we ran the media. What happened?

Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061863646
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	817,907
File size:	676 KB

About the Author

Sam Seder is the cohost, with Janeane Garofalo, of the Air America radio network's Majority Report. A New York-based writer, director, and actor, Seder served with distinction as an intern on Capitol Hill, where he was once caught urinating on the IMF seal.

Stephen Sherrill, a producer at the Majority Report, has written for the Late Show with David Letterman and for TV Nation, as well as for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, and McSweeney's. He lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

F.U.B.A.R.

America's Right-Wing Nightmare

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By Sam Seder

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Sam Seder
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060846712

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Chapter One

Taliban Dreamin'

The Bad News is There's No Good News

You may have noticed that under the Bush regime the line between church and state has gotten a bit blurry. Maybe you've heard about a Ten Commandment controversy here or an attorney general anointing himself with cooking oil there. Perhaps you know that over the past five years your government has given more than a billion dollars of your tax money to tax-exempt churches for "faith-based initiatives" ( aka "pay-Yahweh-ola"). Perhaps you've been following the brouhaha over trying to change the Constitution so that gay people can't get married. But hey, no biggie, they're doing their thing, I'm doing mine.

The problem is that your thing is their thing. The Republican Party isn't the charming, noblesse-oblige, country-club avuncular-drunk Grand Old Party of yesteryear. There's a new sheriff in GOP town. One who believes we're living in end times. This one is lighter on the charm and heavier on the apocalypse. He's a Rapture Republican, a Big Government Theocrat, a Radical Cleric -- an American Taliban.

If you're reading this book, chances are you're a thoughtful, curious person. In our new future under Rapture Republican rule, you maywant to think about dialing that kind of thing down a bit. When in public, stick to simple declarative sentences, like, "Hey, that's tall!" or "According to Jim was awesome last night!" If the world looks flat from where you are, it's flat.

As far as reading in particular, scale back quickly (after, of course, you finish reading this book). If you feel like you absolutely must continue reading, pick up a People or Us Weekly (Time and Newsweek work just as well). Nothing will make you more docile than having your head filled with the details of Nick and Jessica's divorce or whether it's Hilary or Lindsay who's being the jerk about the whole thing.

Return to the World that Never Was

Sure the Rapture Right has always been around, but the new reality is that Washington -- and statehouses and school boards and newsrooms around the country -- are flooded with them. What was once funny is no longer so funny. Ever wonder why you don't hear much about the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority anymore? Well, they've changed their names -- now they're just called Republicans. Here's Hanna Rosin writing in the Washington Post in March 2005:

This year evangelicals in public office have finally become so numerous that they've blended in to the permanent Washington backdrop, a new establishment that has absorbed the local habits and mores . . .

And a lot of them have already absorbed the local habits and mores of Capitol Hill:

. . . Nearly every third congressional office stocks an ambitious Christian leader who calls himself "evangelical," according to Jim Guth, a political science professor at Furman University.

Coral Ridge Ministries boasts a weekly television show and a daily radio show broadcast to millions. The following was written by its former executive director George Grant. It's basically the mission statement of the Rapture Right:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less. If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose. Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations.

Why should they have dominion over all the creatures of the Earth? Because that's what it says in the Bible: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Genesis 1:26). There thou hath it: if thou creepeth, lo, do they hath dominion over thee!

They want it all. And it's not just geographic dominion. While the press has reasonably been distracted with the right's attempt at dominion over the Middle East, they've set about locking up dominion over the homefront -- over sex, religion, your finances (which is to say, your future), and over science. Those are what we're going to focus on, and not just because we don't want to go to Iraq.

It's the last of those -- science -- that we'll start with. Because it's really a battle over truth itself, and they realize that if they can win that, then their "domino theory" may work after all.

Continues...

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Excerpted from F.U.B.A.R. by Sam Seder Copyright © 2006 by Sam Seder. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

From Air America's Majority Report comes an indictment of right-wing policies as raucous and emphatic at its title. Show co-host Sam Seder and producer Stephen Sherrill offer a scathing call to arms, peppering their social critiques liberally with free-spirited humor that even self-proclaimed moderates can enjoy.

In this manifesto, which is occasionally hilarious but more often stale diatribe, Air America radio's Seder and Sherrill have increased the scope of liberal rage to not only our elected leadership, but all those who elected him-the "Rapture Right" as the authors dub them. To read this volume, which uses sarcasm as its main analytical tool, one would think the American right was composed solely of born-again Christians. And that take would indeed justify the title of the book, which is a military acronym meaning "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition." But devoting more than 40 pages (albeit funny ones) to problems plaguing gay Republicans, for example, seems excessive. Where the authors' blistering irony works best, paradoxically, is in the chapter "The Media Is Not Your Friend": the authors discuss in particular the New York Times's Adam Nagourney ("If you want to see why the liberal media is... not liberal") and columnist Thomas Friedman ("what he's really writing about is Tom Friedman"). And here the authors hammer home their best point: the need for so-called "objectivity," which translates as the need to present both sides of an argument, no matter how patently inane. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

F.U.B.A.R. is a military acronym meaning “f----d-up beyond all recognition.” It’s sad to deflate the balloon of political satire that this production promises, but it does not live up to its potential. While Seder and Sherrill craft some witty asides and attempt to shoot down the corruption and infamy of the current Administration and its loony supporters, the audiobook suffers from various F.U.B.A.R.s of its own. In particular, the written material translates poorly to audio, so the ideas appear muddled. Seder is a glib and successful radio host, so if he could learn that basic skill taught to all writers--write the way you speak--this book would not be F.U.B.A.R., but Vunderbar. D.J.B. 2007 Audies Award Finalist © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 06 - AudioFile