Books in Brief: With All Disrespect

With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties, by Calvin Trillin (Ticknor & Fields, 230 pp., $14.95)

The question is: Can a conservative laugh at a column in a pinko magazine like The Nation if the columnist is intending to be funny? The answer is: Theoretically, no; but in the case of Calvin Trillin, yes. Trillin proves the rule because, in the fine tradition of Robert Benchley, he is so bewildered. His entire political philosophy seems to be summed up in the phrase, “It’s too soon to tell.” Sure, he made Reaganites angry with his revelation that Nancy Reagan was called Bubbles in high school, but that essay seemed motivated more by his keen journalistic instincts than by any ideological fervor. His critics on the Left point to his periodic forgetfulness of the anguish suffered by the Scottsboro Boys and his unwillingness to change his name to Ethel Rosenberg. It was Trillin, after all, who brilliantly lampooned East Coast media bias by penning the hypothetical New York Daily News headline, “Snow Storm Slams City; Blacks, Jews Suffer Most.” It’s slim pickings for conservatives looking for humor these days. All the regular columnists who are strictly humorists —Trillin, Russell Baker, Art Buchwald, Fran Lebowitz, Mark Russell, Anthony Lewis—are liberal. Of the group, Trillin is the least reverent toward liberal pieties, and, not coincidentally, he is the funniest. Why, then, does he write in The Nation? Maybe he wants to keep his humor a secret. More likely, he’s a CIA plant.

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David Brooks

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With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties, by Calvin Trillin (Ticknor & Fields, 230 pp., $14.95)

The question is: Can a conservative laugh at a column in a pinko magazine like The Nation if the columnist is intending to be funny? The answer is: Theoretically, no; but in the case of Calvin Trillin, yes. Trillin proves the rule because, in the fine tradition of Robert Benchley, he is so bewildered. His entire political philosophy seems to be summed up in the phrase, “It’s too soon to tell.” Sure, he made Reaganites angry with his revelation that Nancy Reagan was called Bubbles in high school, but that essay seemed motivated more by his keen journalistic instincts than by any ideological fervor. His critics on the Left point to his periodic forgetfulness of the anguish suffered by the Scottsboro Boys and his unwillingness to change his name to Ethel Rosenberg. It was Trillin, after all, who brilliantly lampooned East Coast media bias by penning the hypothetical New York Daily News headline, “Snow Storm Slams City; Blacks, Jews Suffer Most.” It’s slim pickings for conservatives looking for humor these days. All the regular columnists who are strictly humorists —Trillin, Russell Baker, Art Buchwald, Fran Lebowitz, Mark Russell, Anthony Lewis—are liberal. Of the group, Trillin is the least reverent toward liberal pieties, and, not coincidentally, he is the funniest. Why, then, does he write in The Nation? Maybe he wants to keep his humor a secret. More likely, he’s a CIA plant.