Sore Winners
by John Powers

A tidal wave of literary bile is making its way toward the White House.

In fact, "tidal wave" fails to adequately to describe the volume of criticism and scorn being poured upon the Bush administration by respected economists, wild-eyed documentarians, earnest leftists, professional comedians and former members of the Nixon administration — among others.

But it will have to do. The tsunami of titles is having God-only-knows what sort of impact on the upcoming election while lining the pockets of sharp-shooting journalistic snipers and bomb-hucking political mercenaries alike.

Now that we're at least nine months into the widening flood, it's very, very difficult to get excited about a book like "Sore Winners" after looking at its cover. For starters, there's the photo of Bush. He looks dour and a bit silly. Implicit message: This book will really sock it to the administration!

Oh, boy.

But wait!

"Sore Winners" is something fresh. It's the best attempt to capture the general cultural zeitgeist of the Bush era without getting unduly burdened by describing the 462 ways in which the Bush dynasty is financially tied to the House of Saud.

Author John Powers, the deputy editor of LA Weekly and a critic for NPR's "Fresh Air," admittedly engages in the obligatory flagellation of Bush and friends. And though he does a snappy, accurate job of hitting the standard hot buttons, the purely political sections are the least interesting and least memorable parts of what turns out to be a momentously entertaining book.

At its core, "Sore Winners" takes the grand themes of Bush and Co. — such as social Darwinism, or stark, Christian-influenced Manicheanism — and charts out how they are echoed and reinforced by popular culture.

When grappling with social Darwinism, Powers looks at the still-vigorous genre of reality TV and American attitudes toward "winners" and "losers." He charts the decline in the status of honest, ordinary labor. He looks at classic movies remade with wealthier, better-dressed, more attractive heroes, and he dissects the "screw you, hippie!" attitude that seems to motivate so many owners of SUVs.

In addressing echoes of the Bush tendency to see the world as brutally black and white, he dives into box office smashes like Spiderman, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings to analyze good vs. evil writ large and popular.

Such arguments can get painfully tedious when handled by a google-eyed oversimplifier such as Thomas Friedman. But Powers avoids the trap of finding One Big Idea and cramming all of his evidence into a single box. He deftly identifies outliers, countertrends and theories that are enchanting, but probably not particularly solid.

He's also extremely funny.

Addressing the phenomenal rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger, politician, he writes:

From the early days when Arnold resembled the provincial hero of a nineteenth-century European novel driven to make it in the big city, he pursued his goals with discipline and guile, whether popping steroids and doing endless reps to build up his undersize calves or cannily using his comical accent ("Fuck you, asshohr!") to turn a laughably ungainly name into a worldwide brand. His was the immigrant saga writ large for the media age. Knowing that California's largely apolitical electorate wanted little more than to be led, he used his own record of hard work and voluminous success to offer voters a soaring idea of leadership free of the ballast of saying exactly what that might be.

He's also refreshingly crisp in his judgments of cultural touchstones. One- or two-word tags hang around the necks of all his major references. The Fog of War is "engrossing." Saving Private Ryan is "hokey." "Sex and the City" is "'Friends,' with dirty talk and nudity." "The Simpsons" is "funny and fair minded," "an equal-opportunity mocker" and "the great Middle American epic that far surpasses the fiction of Dos Passos or Sinclair Lewis."

Who can argue with that?

This constant judgement would get irritating were it not for the fact that Powers actually knows his shit. He's not William Safire, or Maureen Dowd, desperately chatting up the interns to cadge the name of the latest hip boy band. He's deeply immersed in popular culture and understands the distinction between stuff that he personally likes, stuff that's culturally important and stuff that looks good, but is rotten to the core.

In the course of his ultimately successful quest for the zeitgeist, Powers explores the secret to Fox News' appeal, the ongoing demise of CNN, the future of gay rights, the meaning of McSweeney's, the tiny but influential audience of programs like "Hardball," the brilliance of "The Daily Show" — among other equally engaging tangents. And while Powers ranges in depth from quick hits to vigorous exploratory overviews, he's always conscious of how his many topics join together into a bigger picture.

Is it a pretty picture? Not really. Is it grotesquely fascinating like a Hieronymus Bosch triptych? You bet. Is it an incredibly good read? If pop culture and politics are your bread and butter, you'd better believe it.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)