(Larger Image)
|
Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror: Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python (Nation Books)
by Terry Jones (Illustrator: Steve Bell)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Nation Books (2004-12-19)
ISBN: 1560256532
EAN: 9781560256533
Dewy Decimal #: 827.914
Paperback: 208 pages
SKU: 20-WS6O-FK4H
Condition: Good
Comments: Cover is clean but has a few creases. clean throughout no marks/highlights. spine very tight. gently read copy
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
Terry Jones is known the world over as one of the beloved creators of the legendary Monty Python. But independent of the Python team, Jones has been writing columns targeting the Anglo-American response to September 11. His wit and venom are particularly focused on the messianic vernacular of Bush and Blair and the semantics of the "war on terror." As Jones writes, "What really alarms me about President Bush's ‘War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? ... How is ‘Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender." Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror proves that in times of high political anxiety, humor and irony are most potent antidotes to the spin emanating from the White House and Downing Street.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Laughing through "history"
Rating  (1)
Date: 2008-10-10
Jones also did a series of "documentaries" on the Barbarians aired (predictably) by the International History channel. He portrays Rome as a bunch of murderous thugs while the Barbarian tribes are portrayed as honorable, honest, highly cultivated philosophers, smart, sophisticated, high-tech people! With very little evidence (?), Jones builds a series of entertaining programs. Yet, the historical evidence he presents is so thin one wonders why real historians are not denouncing him. But if you watch his series very closely you'll understand: Jones is actually equating the US with the blood-thirsty Rome of his program. The other cultures, unfairly called Barbarians according to him, are all for "diversity" and "respect other cultures." Yup, Assyrians, Babylonians, Arabs, Goths, Visigoths, Gauls, Huns, Vandals, etc, were just too busy creating their wonderfully "civilized" nations to take care for defense... and the murderous Roman took advantage of these good-hearted intellectuals... Jeez, his trick is so transparent one wonders how long it will take until this clown is unmasked!
|
|
Leave INFORMED political satire to a master
Rating (1)
Date: 2006-12-15
4 out of 24 customers found this reveiw helpful
Jones has the kind of cheek to make almost anything medieval seem fresh and exciting - however, for truly incisive, biting and dead-on accurate contemporary political and cultural commentary read Christopher Hitchens. If we could find a way to weaponize Hitchen's intellectual and verbal firepower within a missile system there would be no more to fear from Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Quaeda, the Baathists, Syrian and Iranian insurgents, or any other group only too happy to strap bombs onto their children and send them into a crowd of civilians.
Read Hitchens, period, literally for anything!
|
|
Avoid this book, not funny
Rating (1)
Date: 2006-10-05
9 out of 28 customers found this reveiw helpful
Ordinarily, I would not take the time to write a review, but if I could get my money and time back for having purchased and read this book, I would. I love Terry Jones' work, along with the rest of the Pythons, and I was excited when the book arrived. I expected something entertaining, and at least insightful, but what I got was one rant, retold a dozen slightly different ways. It's all based on one web site spelling out some possible right wing conspiracy, and the fact that one web site is cited again and again...and again makes me wonder what the publishers thought they had to work with? At the very least, *do not* pay full retail price for this turkey, buy it used or check it at the library.
|
|
Devastatingly funny account of Bush/Blair fiasco
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-08-29
12 out of 14 customers found this reveiw helpful
Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, has written a very funny book on current affairs, composed of articles he wrote for the Guardian and the Observer from 2001 to 2004.
He shows the real reason for the attack on Iraq quoting the Project for the New American Century's `Rebuilding America's Defenses 2000': "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The same report admits, "adversaries like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate." So they want nukes to deter American aggression - sounds reasonable.
Terry is not very nice to Mr Bush. He cites an undersecretary in Bush's administration as saying, "George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the U.S. [That bit's right, anyway!] He was appointed by God."
So was it God who wanted to take health insurance off four million Americans, and jobs off two million? Did God want to withdraw benefits from working families earning less than $35,000 a year, by cutting Medicaid, supplemental health insurance, nutrition assistance and welfare? CNN reports, "Half of all Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck - effectively one paycheck away from poverty." But then he (He?) balanced all this by generously awarding tax breaks worth $50,000 per person to America's richest one per cent.
It's only fair that Bush's crony Blair gets some stick too. In `Grading Tony's latest essay', Terry writes, "Tony's uncritical acceptance of information supplied by the U.S. reveals a naivety that would be surprising in any sixth-form pupil, let alone one who has hopes of going on to university and then government, as I know Tony does." He ends, "To be quite candid, Mr. and Mrs. Blair, it's lucky that your son is not in a position of power; otherwise his lack of insight and his crass ignorance would place us all in appalling peril." Other classics include, `I'm losing patience with my neighbors, Mr. Bush' and `It really isn't torture'.
|
|
Political satire in the best Swiftian tradition
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-04-15
9 out of 12 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is just what you'd expect from a member of the extraordinarily literate and politically aware Monty Python. Jones shows that the years have not dulled his wit, skewering Bush, Blair and their minions with a thousand razor-sharp barbs, and showing up many of their absurdities by extending them to everyday life. Whether he is debating killing his neighbors because he suspects that they are up to no good or "justifying" the chaining of his son to a radiator because, after all, his _intention_ was to obtain information, not to torture, he makes us unsure whether to laugh or groan at the fact that this _is_ the real world of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.
Not all of these columns (which they were originally published as) are classics, but they are always informative and most of them take a different perspective on issues that are all too often portrayed by the mainstream media with a mind-numbing sameness. Since they were published at sometimes widely-spaced intervals and of necessity repeat a lot of information, I would recommend not reading the book straight through, but picking it up and reading a chapter or two at a time.
Highly recommended chapters: 1) The Grammar of the War on Terror; 3) A Bag Over the Head is Worth Two for George W. Bush; 10) I'm Losing Patience With My Neighbors, Mr. Bush; 11) How To Bomb and Save Money; 20) If Fish Feel Pain...; 28) The War of Words in Iraq; and 32) It Really Isn't Torture.
|
|
|