August 31, 2010 | lists
The book industry is going through a period of transition of the kind typically heralded by the arrival of a hearse. As books struggle with the ephemeral, richly pornographic online world, one of the techniques publishers use to latch on to consumers’ ever-shrinking attention spans is to give their tomes memorable, controversial, and occasionally offensive titles.
E-readers can only help in this regard. In the past, one might have slipped a Michael Ondaatje book cover over “Goat Love: One Man’s Highland Yearnings” in order to avoid causing a titter on the subway. E-readers now mean that one’s terrible taste in books can be kept as safely hidden as one’s risible taste in music – unless your summer library reading list is subpoenaed, in which case you might suddenly find yourself with a whole lot of free time for reading.
Some titles are utterly benign: Nobody will construe Eat, Pray Love as an injunction to follow literal scripture and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance isn’t going to run afoul of devout Buddhists with bus passes. As it says in The Secret—curiously titled as secrets are not meant to be divulged, especially when they read like bathroom graffiti at Hallmark — “Choose your thoughts carefully… you are a masterpiece of your life!” One would assume these titles were all carefully chosen for effect, and when it comes to ability to turn heads at a bookstore, we’d rate them up there with a streaker running through the botanical plants section. Here is our list of the Top 10 Most Controversial Book Titles released by major publishers — self-published screeds read only by authorities in the wake of a terrible crime have been excluded.
10. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly.
Easterly makes a case for cheapskates in this anti-humanitarian aid polemic, which won’t see him passing breadrolls to Bono at an $8000/ plate buffet. While some may agree with his stance that poverty is best overcome through grass-roots, indigenous movements, the loaded title garnered more attention than, “Save your money for a cup of coffee a day: Arguments against humanitarian aid” would have.
Alternate Title: They Know It’s Christmas. Band Aids don’t Work.
Honorable Mention: 
Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the 17th Century Caribbean by B.R. Burg
Had the Epcot Centre’s Pirates of the Carribean ride been based on this tome it would have a distinctly different tenor and be less attractive as a mainstream movie franchise. What, the author asks, did these men, often on the high seas for years at a time, do for sexual fulfillment? Well, the poor cabin boy has some stories to tell.
9. White Slave: The Autobiography of Chef Marco Pierre White.
Chef White, who famously once reduced Chef Gordon Ramsay to tears— and not because he rubbed a scotch bonnet in his face — had his chef’s whites/surname/Caucasian triple entendre excised for the US release, The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef. Not surprisingly, slavery doesn’t sell on these shores when it applies to those who can’t jump.
Alternate Title: Little White Truths.
8. The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.
In this cheery tome, Hitch unleashes a stinging exposition of the world’s most famous Albanian. [The second being Adil Hoxha, Bart's student exchange on The Simpsons, the third, possibly Albanian Canadian former hockey goon Tie Domi].
Hitch writes [Mother Teresa] “was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God.” [Editors' note: As an aside, a joke Christopher is fond of telling "Why don't Jews drink? Because it numbs the pain."]
Alternate Title: Missionary Impossible.
7. That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women with Malicious Intent by Roy Sheppard and Mary Cleary.
According to its Amazon description, “The book explores the lying, cheating, conniving and manipulation of women with malicious intent.”
Probably not a good one to whip out for a quick check during a speed-dating event or to be seen carrying on a bus when a cute coed steps on. Going out in public with this title slung under your arm will nearly guarantee a wider berth than most body odours or swining a machete. If the Amazon description is anything to go by, it may, however, prove to be an invaluable tool in a person’s quest to cling to bitterness and let one negative experience inform your opinion of huge sections of the population.
Alternate Title: It’s a Man’s World: Inside My Lonely Bachelor Existence.
6. Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake
When it comes to gold digging, only a Newmont Mining exploration would come close to this effort, which asks “why does society applaud a girl who falls for a guy’s ‘big blue eyes’ (one-half of the Shark Guys applauds along with society) yet denounces one who chooses a man with a ‘big green bankroll’”?
As one reviewer says “I could see this as a great book club choice”, but for our money, if we were to wield a book like a club, we would select something of Proustian length.
Alternate Title: Not Without Dinner and a Show First: The Price of a Smart Girl’s Company.
5. Why Do I Vomit? and Other Questions about Digestion by Angela Royston
We’ve delved into this issue earlier in our list of the Top 10 Worst Cookbooks (Cooking with Balls for example, is unfortunately not a euphemism). This book, How long does food stay in your body? Why does your stomach rumble when you’re hungry? Why should you eat vegetables? Why is pizza overwhelmingly the most common food stuff vomited late at night in alleys? (ok, we made up that last one).
The ideal gag gift. Get it!?
Alternate Title: Beer Before Liquor, Never Sicker: Tales from the porcelain throne.
Honorable Mention:
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens again with this condemnation of “celestial dictatorships” and call for a new age of enlightenment to move beyond the worship of a deity who shares much in common with Santa Claus or a really dedicated stalker — knows when you’re sleeping, knows when you’re awake…
4. Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete by William C. Rhoden
The ‘slave’ analogy is hard so swallow when pro athletes can use Ben Franklins to snort cocaine and then leave the bills as tips—The Miami Heat’s two newest superstars, for example, LeBron James and Chris Bosh signed matching six-year, $110.1 million contracts recently, so it’s safe to say they won’t be availing themselves of a bus pass any time over the next 5 decades.
Alternate Title: When I Shoot Freethrows I Earn as Much as you do in a Week
3. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Dawkins, the most arrogant member of the so-called New Atheist movement, famously suggested that critically thinking people should, to differentiate themselves from the dullard hoi polloi, call themselves “brights”, which, in one sense at least, is not a very bright at idea at all.
2. The Trouble with Islam by Irshad Manji
As journalist Johann Hari put it, “it would be hard for anybody to guess that [Manji] is the star attraction on jihadist death-lists. She has the small, slender body of a ballet-dancer, and a Concorde-speed Canadian voice that makes her sound more like a character in a Woody Allen movie than an enemy of Osama Bin Laden’s.”
Suggested title: I Slam Islam.
Honorable Mention: Semen For Sale. All About Artificial Insemination. 
by D.O. Cauldwell
This is not a sequel to the aforementioned book on pirates. It is important to note the missing ‘a’ in the first word.
Alternate Title: O Cum, all Ye Fertile.
1. N*gger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
by Randall Kennedy.
Yep, this wins the prize for ability to cause the greatest offense using the fewest letters. Much like you should not shout “fire” in a crowded theater, unless it was at a live finale taping of The Apprentice, shouting “n*gger” in one, tests the limits of free speech and one’s ability to run from large groups of people wishing to imprint your face in the sidewalk.
[Editors' note: We chose to, of course, focus solely on English language works. We're almost certain something penned in one of India's 16 vernacular languages or books of dirty German limericks feature titles as flinch-worthy as any described here.]
August 26, 2010 | Heroes,lists
“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself … Picture all experts as if they were mammals.” Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is dying, but then, as he points out, so are we all — it’s just that he might be “leaving the party” earlier than he had hoped. His Vanity Fair column discussing his cancer diagnosis and the early stages of his struggle with “the blind, emotionless alien” inside him showed a remarkable and laudable consistency with much of what he’s written over the years — it was intellectually honest, and railed against cliche and the maudlin (even at a time when most would have forgiven him for both). It was also not without humor — indeed, if he hadn’t from an early age looked at the world in terms of grand political struggles and ideologies, he may have been one of the great humor writers of his time, and in many ways he is, regardless of the subject matter.
Back to consistency. Hitchens’ Vanity Fair piece was as deeply personal as anything he’s ever written, and as would be expected at such a time, he begins to ruminate on all that an early death will rob him of: “Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?”
It’s a cold man, or possibly the prospective father-in-law of Mel Gibson, who wouldn’t want to see his children get married, and the reconstruction of the WTC would to Hitchens be a symbolic rebuke of the spirit of nihilistic religious zealoutry that brought the towers down in the first place — the type of fanaticism he deplores, and about which he cautions constant vigilance. What those who aren’t familiar with Hitchens may have found surprising was his ruing of the fact, even at this dark hour, that he may not be there to raise his hand when the tributes roll in for Kissinger and the Pope — he wrote a book damning the former, and his screeds against the latter could likely be collected into a similarly long form — and say, “On the contrary.”
For Hitch fans, the lament was fitting. Hitchens has made a sideline of offering some of the most delicious skewerings of people in the public sphere to appear in print over the past 20+ years, and he has no problem putting revered feet into the fire. On the Penn and Teller episode devoted to questioning the accepted saintliness of Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Gandhi, Hitch was a natural choice as a guest as he was probably the only mainstream pundit who had bashed all three in print.
Here then is a collection of excerpts from Hitchens’ columns in Slate, Vanity Fair and some of his books that shows the Crown Prince of Pillorying at work. These are Christopher Hitchens’ greatest hits!
(Note: All text below the name of the target is excerpted from Hitch’s writings [name linked to source where possible]. Notes in itals are the authors’.)
According to Hitch, a contender for worst president ever, with Hugo Chavez (see below).
Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity.
Hitch does not often agree with the foreign policy critiques of the peanut farmer from Plains, GA.
Prince Charles (on him becoming king)
From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.
Bill Clinton
Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist [plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape], executed a black man [Ricky Ray Rector] who was so mentally retarded that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You’re against all that, right? But you’re for it when it’s someone who you think is a ‘New Democrat’.
From “Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice”
Hitchens despised Clinton to the extent that he wrote a book condemning him. Even now, addled with cancer, Hitchens loathing for Clinton remains strong. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he seemed slightly stunned by the suggestion that it possibly could.
On the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president:
What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor?
[Hugo] Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.
Hitchens, after a trip to Venezuela with Sean Penn that left him questioning the mental fitness of that country’s leader. Hitch obviously enjoys the poached egg analogy, having used it more than once in his writings.
The Dalai Lama
In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent from Chinese hegemony — a “perfectly good” demand, if I may reder it into everyday English — but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy.
An excerpt from the “There is no eastern solution” chapter of Hitch’s book “God is Not Great”.
Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire. From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm.
While Hitch may miss out on writing obits for Kissinger and the current pontiff, he can take some consolation in having been around to write the above, part of a Slate column after the “Reverend’s” death, and to make statements such as the following to counter some of the tributes rolling in:
“If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.”
“Hannity and Colmes”, Fox News
Gandhi
To state the matter shortly: he wanted India to revert to a village-dominated and primitive “spiritual” society, he made power-sharing with Muslims much harder, and he was quite prepared to make hypocritical use of violence when he thought it might suit him … [Gandhi] rhapsodized about the Indian village, where the millennial rhythms of animals and crops would determine how human life was lived. Millions of people would have mindlessly starved to death if his advice had been followed, and would have continued to worship cows.
From the “There is no Eastern Solution” chapter of Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great”.
One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all … He has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect (a view that he justifies as “a pronouncement from the chair”). And it has been obvious for some time to the most meager intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred.
From a column following after Gibson’s DUI arrest and anti-Semitic tirade, which he later blamed on the effects of drink.
I make no apology for calling him a provincial redneck, because that, to be fair to him once more, was how he thought of himself and even described himself. It was a scandal that a man with so little knowledge of the outside world should have had such a stranglehold on American foreign policy for so long … The way to mark Helms’ passing is to recognize that he prolonged the life of the old segregated South and the Dixiecrat ascendancy and that in his own person, not unlike Strom Thurmond, he personified much of its absurdity and redundancy.
In probably the only obit about Helms titled, “Goodbye to a provincial redneck”.
The sexlessness of Hope’s routines, however, was just another clue to their essential conformism and cowardice. Eye-rolling and wolf-whistling are among the weakest forms of crowd pleasing that we possess. And Hope never stretched or challenged an audience in his life. For him, the safe and antique moves were the best, if not the only. The smirk was principally one of risk-free self-congratulation … A Bob Hope joke was no laughing matter: It was a bland attempt at what we would now yawningly call inclusiveness.
Written shortly after the passing of the English-born comedian. Includes a hilarious excerpt taken from the New York Times obit in which Hope’s laugh-defying jokes are quoted. The above quote can also apply to Jay Leno.
But when real political racism rears its head, our easily upset media fall oddly silent. Can you guess why? Of course you can. Gov. Huckabee is the self-anointed candidate of the simple and traditional Christian folk who hate smart-ass, educated, big-city types, and if you dare to attack him for his vulgarity and stupidity and bigotry, he will accuse you of prejudice in return.
On Mike Huckabee’s comments alluding to support for the confederate flag.
It must take some ingenuity at the networks, even so, to simply airbrush the fascist sympathies and bootlegging background of Joseph Kennedy Sr., his sons’ murder campaigns in Cuba, the recruitment of the mafia for same, the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, the increasingly frantic and pathetic narco-addictions of JFK, the exploitation of unstable broads like Marilyn Monroe, and so much else besides.
The above was included in Ted Kennedy’s obituary, which was surprisingly kind to the last of the Kennedy brothers. Hitch was not so charitable when it came to the memory of JFK:
“If this vulgar hoodlum president had not been survived by a widow of exceptional bearing and grace, his reputation would probably now be dirt.”
Henry Kissinger
A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.
In the realm of American politics, only Henry Kissinger rivaled Bill Clinton as a target for Hitchens’ contempt. Quote from Hitchens book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”.
Michael Moore
Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone (Michael Moore) who actually embodies all of those qualities.
“Scarborough Country” on MSNBC. Hitchens lost what respect he had for Michael Moore with the making of Farhenheit 9/11, which he critiqued on Slate.
I never expected to see a day when it would become a plastic-imitation Disneyland, with the mirthless smirk of the uniformed attendant making sure that everyone had a boring and wholesome time and was tucked up in bed before two in the morning.
In the above piece, Hitchens had fun going around NYC and racking up all of the infractions he could against the city’s innumerable by-laws. He also had a chance to offer his opinion on that city’s mayor:
Michael Bloomberg
This current Niagara of pettiness and random victimization may well be Bloomberg’s attempt at a wannabe reputation as heroic crime-fighter and disciplinarian. Who knows what goes on in the tiny, constipated chambers of his mind? All we know for certain is that one of the world’s most broad-minded and open cities is now in the hands of a picknose control freak.
What price the courageous frontier huntress now—an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away? Some condescending right-wing intellectuals are calling her style “populist” and comparing it with Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan. The true name for it is demagogy, descending from Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch, and the nastier elements of the old Nixon gang—people to whom slander and defamation was second nature.
Hitchens lambasted Palin in more than one Slate column as she continued to give offense during her vice-presidential bid.
The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn’t like him all that much.
Hitchens strays from the pack again in this write-up following the death of the former president and Bedtime for Bonzo star.
As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.
Hitchens here was writing about Sheehan’s denial of anti-Israeli statements in a letter she had written (which she later claimed had been doctored).
[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. …Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud…
Hitchens also wrote a book-length critique of the woman he dubbed the “ghoul of Calcutta”, a book that would likely win the prize for more gasps induced at a bookstore by its title alone: “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice”.
Vidal in his decline has fans like David Letterman’s, who laugh in all the wrong places lest they suspect themselves of not having a good time.
Hitchens rues some of the more crackpot notions of his one-time mentor.
There’s just one Hitch and for his readers – who have
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August 25, 2010 | lists
Chavo Guerrero rakes the eyes of the Undertaker, while the ref, in almost existentialist futility, is preoccupied elsewhere
[A slightly altered version of this list first appeared over at the fun Camel Clutch Blog]
The WWE has yet to induct a WWE referee into its hall-less Hall of Fame, and that is in the words of the late, great Gorilla Monsoon, “a miscarriage of justice”.
As fans of 80s pro-wrestling, we grew up with the likes of Earl Hebner and Joey Marella, who were the third, oft-abused men in the ring for some of the decade’s classic wrestling matches. They would run around the ring, pass signals to wrestlers, and all the while be on the receiving end of a never-ending stream of abuse from the broadcasters who would constantly question their credentials for the job. [As far as the latter goes, this is not altogether different from what happens in the world of professional boxing]
Along with being an integral part of the pro-wrestling show, the referee gives your average fan with an interest in joining the business more realistic goals: 1) It’s pretty unlikely that someone whose genetics point him towards the bench rather than the field will be able to become a pro-wrestler, no matter how many scraps he’s won on a mattress at the local city dump and 2) it’s also a chance to adjudicate the outcome of something important even if your GPA excludes you from all but Caribbean-based lawschools.
Yes, becoming a referee should be within the grasp of most mobile fans of the sport. (See Point No. 2 – qualifications appear to be minimal).
We have compiled the following as a tribute to the formerly bow-tied arbiters of justice in the squared circle and as a guide of key points to the job for aspiring refs:
1. The referee will never disqualify someone for not breaking on the count of five unless the wrestler plans to hold on to it for a full five minutes to injure his opponent and establish himself as a psychopath.
2. Unlike referees in other sports who often simply look like they could be replaced by just about anyone, in wrestling it is actually often the case: the pin-head stripers can be replaced at any 
juncture by a celebrity, old wrestler, or even some guy who runs into the ring from the stands to count three after they’ve been knocked out.
3. The ref will usually draw out the count of three like a reality show cliff-hanger unless a roll-up pinning combination is involved. When that happens, the ref will count the three as if the building is on fire and every second saved is precious.
4. With more chairs being thrown around than your average concert riot, it’s not uncommon for wrestlers to take one off the nogin (it’s always a folding chair, as modernist furniture contains more sharp edges). Refs, however, have a considerably weaker constitution. Regardless of the severity of the impact, “accidentally” being bumped will send the referee flying to the mat or outside the ring and knock him unconscious for as long as required for someone to pull something underhanded. His miraculous recovery will automatically coincide with the heel going for the pin.
5. On a related point, when a ref takes a fall, he will land in such a way that his vision of the chicanery going on behind him is obscured as he stands up.
Here, Doink—number 9 in our list of the Worst Masked Wrestling Gimmicks of all Time, prepares to level a hapless Crush, who sadly, does not have eyes in the back of his mulleted head. The ref of course, is occupying a not uncommon position—often attributed to horizontal British boxers.
Also the ref bizarrely chooses not to look around as he comes to, but rather stares straight ahead or at the mat, thus giving the villain a few extra seconds to do something dastardly. (A common scenario: the heel partner outside the ring, with the ref turned 180 degrees, wails the baby-face with a championship belt—which carries considerable heft as its knockout power is greater than George Foreman clobbering someone with his grill)
6. Every time someone puts on a hold like an abdominal stretch or some equally boring rest hold, the pro-wrestling referee will lean in with an intense focus that suggests he reckons this just might be the first time in the history of wrestling that someone will submit to such a hold.
7. While the ref is in heated discussions with a tag team partner outside the ring, the legal man can be stomped by Bloods, Crips, members of the audience, pepper-sprayed exposed to caustic industrial chemicals and left for dead. What the ref could possibly be discussing for this length of time is one of those “suspension of disbelief” wrestling mysteries best left untouched.
8. When wrestlers are battling on the outside of the ring and the ref begins the count of 10, an epoch in human history will often pass before he 
completes the count in an important match. People will do somersault planchas into pile-drivers through tables, return to the dressing room to get their buddies’ impressions of the move, hold a press conference detailing the media’s exaggerated impressions of steroids in pro wrestling… Then they’ll stop for a late night snack, before finally getting gas and returning to the ring. The ref will be at 4.
completes the count in an important match. People will do somersault planchas into pile-drivers through tables, return to the dressing room to get their buddies’ impressions of the move, hold a press conference detailing the media’s exaggerated impressions of steroids in pro wrestling… Then they’ll stop for a late night snack, before finally getting gas and returning to the ring. The ref will be at 4. 9. The ref will invariably fail to see that the bad guy has his legs stretched to the ring rope for added leverage, even when the heel manager or tag team partner is latched onto them and swinging about. Worse, rather than looking at the video footage afterward and ruing ever having fallen for such a ploy, the ref will miss this night after night, allowing the heel to cheat with impunity.
10. If the ref is in any way athletic or larger than, say, Jimmy Mouth of the South Hart, he will probably make a biased call in a match and find himself embroiled in the classic “heel referee” skit that pro-wrestling likes to trot out whenever the creative well runs dry. (The greatest of these was, of course, Dangerous Danny Davis).
