1. Rosenbaum would later write a controversial nonfiction book titled Explaining Hitler, which was controversial for suggesting that Hitler was (possibly) an un-evil infant.
2. Yes, they were related.
1. The failure of which, it should be noted, helped Coca-Cola immensely. The introduction of New Coke was either the smartest or luckiest marketing scheme of the 1980s.
2. When I first wrote this sentence, it read, “Since the advent of digital video recorders, I never see TV commercials.” But I suppose that isn’t accurate; I don’t watch commercials, but I do see them. I see them flicker across the screen at four times the normal speed, minus the audio. But maybe this is enough. Maybe all I need to do is see them, because I can figure out the rest on my own.
1. “Some fans have told me that their children hear me saying ‘we are all on drugs’ and they take it literally because they don’t know any better,” Cuomo later told Spin. “And that makes me feel horrible … In my mind, love and drugs are the same thing—we’re all numbing ourselves or stimulating ourselves with intense relationships or TV or movies or music and we use these like drugs.” In other words, this is a figurative phrase that requires a literal reading, which is not the same as irony.
2. Hence the 1980 short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
3. Most Herzog quotes in this essay are coming from the aforementioned book Herzog on Herzog (edited by Paul Cronin), simply because it is one of the few examples of the director speaking in an unfiltered context.
4. In fact, he briefly suspended his 2008 campaign (in late October) when the aging woman fell ill. She ultimately died one day before her grandson’s election.
5. Immediately after Obama’s feel-good victory in fall of 2008, writers as sensible as Joan Didion expressed the fear that this might push America into an “irony-free zone” where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.” This was similar to the “Death Of Irony” that was supposed to happen following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In both cases, the Death Of Irony lasted roughly five weeks. Irony is like Jason Voorhees.
6. The day after Obama was elected president, Nader said the key question that would be facing the new leader was whether he would be an “Uncle Sam” for the American people or an “Uncle Tom” for giant corporate interests. This was essentially the end of Nader’s TV career. But what’s even crazier about the content of this statement is that Nader was not using the term “Uncle Tom” the way 99.9 percent of Americans perceive it; he was using it as it strictly applies to the character from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, which did not necessarily depict Tom pejoratively. Nader doesn’t understand how the nonliteral world operates. That’s his paradoxical value.
7. Here’s an unasked question about The Office: In both the American and British versions, the program is shot as a documentary. The characters are directly interviewed and often acknowledge the camera crew with knowing glances. But why is this office being filmed? Why is someone making an around-the-clock documentary of these ordinary people, even when they leave the building? What is the purpose? And when, in theory, would the filming conclude?
8. This is from an interview conducted by Jennifer Wallace for the book Predictions.
9. The one detail in the song that was changed was the age of the real-life letter writer: In the lyrics, she is described as eighteen. She was actually fourteen.
10. I suspect Cuomo now realizes this and is somewhat uncomfortable with what that means. He has taken to giving conflicting reports about what happened in the wake of this recording. In 2006, he claimed he had never contacted the girl who wrote the letter and knew nothing about her. In 2008, he said the woman was actually receiving royalties from “Across the Sea,” due to his use of specific lines from her original note. I suppose it is possible both of these things are true, but highly unlikely.
1. My physical appearance might play a role in this.
2. Kaczynski’s brother David deduced that the Unabomber was probably Ted when he noticed that several of Ted’s pet phrases were used in the manifesto, most notably the term “cool-headed logicians.”
3. I would never argue that Siegel isn’t a smart guy, nor would I expect him to take my criticism of his work seriously. However, much of this book is inundated with weirdly transparent explanations for his cultural values. At one point in Against the Machine, he attacks Malcolm Gladwell, insisting, “Back in high school, people like him were the reason you drank, brooded over Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and imagined which celebrated public figures would speak at your (imminent) funeral.” I halfway assumed the next sentence was going to be “And you know what else—Gladwell thinks his hair is so cool, but it’s totally not.”
4. Well, maybe.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Half Title Page
1 Something Instead of Nothing
2 Oh, the Guilt
3 Tomorrow Rarely Knows
4 What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson
5 Through a Glass, Blindly
6 The Passion of the Garth
7 “The Best Response”
8 Football
9 ABBA 1, World 0
10 “Ha ha,” he said. “Ha ha.”
11 It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened
12 T Is for True
13 FAIL
Acknowledgments
Index
Footnote
Eating the Dinosaur Page 23