BOOK CLUB. Another reason to hate them all, of course, is because they're such pissy little shits. Al Gore says* his favorite book is The Red and the Black, and the National Review guys start going "Oh no he dih-hint" and snapping their gum. Derbyshire at least admits only that he would like to believe Gore is lying about Stendhal (though Clinton, in the Derbview, is presumed to lie about everything, especially the Tomes of the Ancients): John Podhoretz says, with no evidence whatsoever, that Gore was trying to "make it appear he is something he almost certainly isn't: A steady reader of great literature." Not like Podhoretz, who walks around the office in a toga, index finger heavenward, declaiming on lofty artistic subjects between infusions of malted milk.

You can just see them balling their tiny fists and wishing they could make Gore take a test with lots of trick questions.

Literature, like everything else in this life, means nothing to them but an opportunity to score points on the people they have been trained to hate. Were they not trusted advisors to the scum who wreck our lives, I'd pity them.

*UPDATE. Actually Gore made this claim in 2000, and the Cornerites were roused by its recent mention by Rick Brookhiser, who adds:

George W. Bush said his was The Raven, an old Pulitzer prize winning bio of Sam Houston that is readily available in Texas. Most interesting bit: Houston had the same problem Bush had.

I had no idea Sam Houston was a sociopathic coke freak, nor that he believed the Alamo to be a great success right up till such brains as he had were dashed out by Mexicans. History is fun!