The Bad Boy of Bloomington

Let no one be deceived by the fact that this is a very funny book; it is also a very serious book. Only solemnity, as G. B. Shaw wrote, is incompatible with the serious; humor can, and has many times over in the course of history, become an instrument of deadly seriousness. Tyrrell has lashed out with wit, caricature, comedy, burlesque, and ridicule, much of it of a very high order indeed, against a couple of dozen American intellectuals and politicians who have, he thinks, done the Republic severe intellectual damage. While everyone should enjoy the laughs, it’s nice to know too that there is first-rate social criticism in this book.

Mr. Tyrrell, as most readers of NR will know, is the gifted editor of The American Spectator (formerly, more impudently, The Alternative). He is himself a public nuisance of no mean proportions, as Ben Wattenberg notes on the dust jacket. Brash, disrespectful of his elders and of the dear departed, Tyrrell has been, for more than a decade now, constantly on the prowl. And some of his victims, including more than a few in this book, are left with only their skeletons gleaming in the sun.

RN

About the Author

Robert Nisbet

Let no one be deceived by the fact that this is a very funny book; it is also a very serious book. Only solemnity, as G. B. Shaw wrote, is incompatible with the serious; humor can, and has many times over in the course of history, become an instrument of deadly seriousness. Tyrrell has lashed out with wit, caricature, comedy, burlesque, and ridicule, much of it of a very high order indeed, against a couple of dozen American intellectuals and politicians who have, he thinks, done the Republic severe intellectual damage. While everyone should enjoy the laughs, it’s nice to know too that there is first-rate social criticism in this book.

Mr. Tyrrell, as most readers of NR will know, is the gifted editor of The American Spectator (formerly, more impudently, The Alternative). He is himself a public nuisance of no mean proportions, as Ben Wattenberg notes on the dust jacket. Brash, disrespectful of his elders and of the dear departed, Tyrrell has been, for more than a decade now, constantly on the prowl. And some of his victims, including more than a few in this book, are left with only their skeletons gleaming in the sun.