A Time to Vomit

Matt Welch | October 26, 2005

So there's a new Beltway novel out about a feisty little Blue-state Senatress who courageously opposes a Republican president's nomination of an underqualified woman to the Supreme Court. And you'll never guess who co-wrote it -- Botoxed pepperpot Barbara Boxer! The L.A. Times description sounds gruesome:

In "A Time to Run," the main characters from the reigning "blue states" -- Josh from California and Ellen from equally reassuring New York -- are liberal, altruistic, sane. Their affluent families are caring and sharing.

Their red state-born buddy, Greg, is the son of an emotionally abusive Ohio hardware seller former Marine who lost his favorite son in Vietnam. The red states that Greg heads to after graduation are interchangeably dull Siberias where Greg hangs out with the menfolk, bonding over beer, football and hunting.

Josh and Ellen become Left Coast do-gooders. Greg becomes a sociopathic neoconservative journalist, the go-to guy for character assassinations conjured by a right-wing California senator. Boxer said that although she didn't intend for the characters to represent the American political equation, "I hope people will understand the issues I raise about why people are blue or red or purple."

Her literary intrigues are not all political: There's also some bodice-ripping, with a love triangle between Greg, Ellen and Josh, and physical congress, tastefully suggested by euphemisms in which bodies "mesh."

Comments

|10.26.05 @ 3:18PM|#

How... predictable...

|10.26.05 @ 3:19PM|#

Josh from California and Ellen from equally reassuring New York -- are liberal, altruistic, sane. Their affluent families are caring and sharing....

Their red state-born buddy, Greg, is the son of an emotionally abusive Ohio hardware seller former Marine who lost his favorite son in Vietnam. The red states that Greg heads to after graduation are interchangeably dull Siberias where Greg hangs out with the menfolk, bonding over beer, football and hunting.

Boxer said that although she didn't intend for the characters to represent the American political equation, "I hope people will understand the issues I raise about why people are blue or red or purple."

So urban leftists are emotionally stable and conservatives are psychotic country bumpkins? Now, I don't carry a torch for conservatism, but I have to say that Boxer's stereotypes are unfair. They're just as nasty as any cariacture of liberals that Hanity of Limbaugh, Michael Savage, or Ann Coulter could draw.

I say again, if this national ad hominem slinging keeps up much longer this country is going to be in a bloody mess, literally.

Jeff P.|10.26.05 @ 3:20PM|#

Band Name: The Botoxed Pepperpots.

|10.26.05 @ 3:23PM|#

Sounds as bad as the book written by Dan Quayle's wife. :)

|10.26.05 @ 3:24PM|#

No love for B. Boxer, but, from a website that warmly embraces all new human-nature modification technology (see R. Bailey's new piece), it sounds a bit tin when the use of botox is pointed out in an attempt to denigrate.

|10.26.05 @ 3:27PM|#

Wait, I can't tell who the protagonists are!

|10.26.05 @ 3:57PM|#

Somehow I'm picturing one of those 'bodice-ripper' book covers, but featuring Ted Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski. Urgghh. Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.

|10.26.05 @ 3:59PM|#

Hot damn! Two rich kids, a sociopathic jock, youthful indiscretion, an emotionally abusive father and a love triangle. Slap on a glistening Fabio cover and sell it in the Romance section.

|10.26.05 @ 4:01PM|#

worm,

I won't read it. However, if you do a movie of it starring puppets I promise to be there on opening night.

Jeff P.
Yes and they should go on tour with the Trotskyite Popinjays.

Britton|10.26.05 @ 4:03PM|#

Worm- that was beautiful.

The movie can star various assorted Baldwins.

|10.26.05 @ 4:08PM|#

How disturbing is it that this woman is a senator?
At least Coulter and company can only run their mouths. Boxer makes laws. Scary.

gaius marius|10.26.05 @ 4:33PM|#

god, that just sounds like the most awful book of the year. yikes!

|10.26.05 @ 4:41PM|#

Somehow I'm picturing one of those 'bodice-ripper' book covers, but featuring Ted Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski.

Fuck. You. You didn't have to share that.

|10.26.05 @ 5:14PM|#

Fuck. You. You didn't have to share that.

Welcome to my nightmare, Shem.

|10.26.05 @ 5:26PM|#

Worm,

Does Geena Davis get to play the bow and arrow brandishing Rock Reason in the movie?

|10.26.05 @ 5:39PM|#

Do other characters in this book include Dob Bole, Teve Torbes, and Lamar Alexander Number Two?

|10.26.05 @ 5:55PM|#

Sounds yucky.

|10.26.05 @ 5:55PM|#

worm,

Thank you! I was truly disturbed by the Boxer plot. I feel much better having read yours. :-)

|10.26.05 @ 5:56PM|#

I followed the link to the Amazon page but I'm still not convinced this is real. It can't be, can it? Dare I ask if Barbara Boxer doesn't have, uh, more compelling things to do with her time?

|10.26.05 @ 6:04PM|#

Hey, as long as Rock Reason doesn't make a sixty-page-long speech near the end, I'm in.

|10.26.05 @ 7:12PM|#

I'm waiting until the movie...

|10.26.05 @ 7:53PM|#

Do other characters in this book include Dob Bole, Teve Torbes, and Lamar Alexander Number Two?

Best SNL reference I've seen here in a long time.

|10.26.05 @ 7:55PM|#

I'm just glad I am still half drunk-- beer makes this a lot easier to digest (and no one wants to see me spew pizza all over the computer in the library).

|10.26.05 @ 8:01PM|#

"No love for B. Boxer, but, from a website that warmly embraces all new human-nature modification technology (see R. Bailey's new piece), it sounds a bit tin when the use of botox is pointed out in an attempt to denigrate."

There's a real difference between trying to legislate behavior you don't like and trying to mock it into the fringes.

I may not like seeing fat girls wearing spandex and men sporting Daisy Dukes, but I'll defend their right to do it and mine to mock and denigrate it.

|10.26.05 @ 8:16PM|#

I followed the link to the Amazon page but I'm still not convinced this is real. It can't be, can it? Dare I ask if Barbara Boxer doesn't have, uh, more compelling things to do with her time?

You're assuming that she actually wrote the book.

The other possibility, that she actually wrote the book and passed off her legislative duties to staffers, is unpleasant to consider.

|10.26.05 @ 9:47PM|#

SR,

Barbara Boxer passing off her legislative duties to anyone else would be an improvement.

|10.26.05 @ 10:07PM|#

My brother sent this review from Amazon to me .... HIL-LARIOUS ... p.s. I have been living in the anarcho-syndicalism state of California for 3 weeks and all ready I want to exterminate half the populace and 100% of the body politic.

Here's a review posted on Amazon:

The very existence of this book answers a lot of questions about the state of California politics, October 26, 2005 Reviewer: Shaun Mason (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
I've exchanged e-mail with Senator Boxer over everal issues in the time she's been my senator. Lauded her tough questioning of Condi in the Senate, blasted her for siding with Ahhhhhnold on gay marriage (along with Diane Feinstein). Many Californians were mystified by the ridiculous circus our home state political situation has become, recalling an okay governer and electing an a-hole action movie "actor" to the office. We all wondered "where are our Democratic leaders when we need them? Where is a voice who will stand up and say "this is just crazy." We wondered where our leaders were who would say "Do not invade
Iraq, this is a bad, destructive idea." At least we now know
the answer for Senator Boxer, she was writing a self-
serving, nacissistic novel that I guess reimagines a fantasy
life for herself. While an illegal, immoral war rages on,
the budget of our state goes down the toilet, our state
education goes to hell, and the democratic party lies in
disarray, Boxer was writing a f***ing novel. This is good to
know. In the L.A. Times she called herself "prescient"
because the novel predicts a female conservative candidate
for the supreme court. I have some prescient information for
Senator Boxer: enjoy the next three years in the senate,
because they will be your last. I'm a lifelong democrat who
has voted for you since 1993, and that won't happen again
either. I urge all Californians to oppose any sitting
senator who has time to write a novel, regardless of party.
I've never been so embarrassed to have voted for someone.
Unless Boxer wants to admit she didn't actually write any of
it, and that she merely gave ideas to her cowriter, who did
the work, takes her name off it, gives the advance back and
gets back to work, I urge California Democrats to oppose
this woman's future political career. We live in frightening
times in which right-wing christian fascists threaten our
freedoms, and oligarchs rule the country. We needed Barbara
Boxer to keep her eye on the ball, not curl up on airplanes
with her iBook writing a trashy novel about herself. Damn I
feel betrayed as a voter. I urge Californians not to buy
this book and rethink their support of Senator Boxer.

|10.26.05 @ 10:07PM|#

Independent Worm! You make genius!

Hey, as long as Rock Reason doesn't make a sixty-page-long speech near the end, I'm in.

I'm guessing that instead, every third page contains a veiled pitch for Choices: The Best of Reason. :)

Jason Sonenshein|10.26.05 @ 10:32PM|#

If that Times description is anything to go by, Senator Boxer's book looks to be about as subtle as one of those Chick tracts.

|10.27.05 @ 12:43AM|#

"While an illegal, immoral war rages on,
the budget of our state goes down the toilet, our state education goes to hell, and the democratic party lies in disarray, Boxer was writing a f***ing novel."

Exactly.

Although as an aside, I don't know how anyone can claim Califonia is anarcho-syndicalist. The term itself is somewhat vague ... but um no can't see that it applies at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

|10.27.05 @ 1:16AM|#

This is

The

Best

Story

EVER!

|10.27.05 @ 12:02PM|#

Anarcho - California? Try smothering nanny-state. Gah! How did a one time bastion of responsible sef-sufficient individualists become...this? My beautiful state, sob.

While I can respect Diane, even though I dissagree with her politics, Babs is a vacuous self-promoter.

|10.27.05 @ 12:36PM|#

>You're assuming that she actually wrote the book.

Well, sort of. I'm more or less assuming that she scheduled meetings with her "co-author" to assist in development of characters and plot lines, and with her lawyers to negotiate with the publisher. Nevertheless, sounds like a waste of time and resources. But whatevah. I'm just hoping no one in my bookclub proposes that we read it. They're nice ladies, but flaming NoCal liberals, all.

Larry A|10.27.05 @ 4:26PM|#

I just can't wait to read the book. Tell me, please, what's the modern equivalent of Snidely Whiplash tying the heroine to the railroad track?

|10.27.05 @ 4:32PM|#

Sexual harrassment, I think.