Buckley is so successful at it that he has revealed the intrinsic shortcomings of his medium.President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. But satire, however tempting it may be in the face of the bleak absurdity of politics, is usually an insufficient means. It is, of course, too much to ask of a light satirical novel that it trade in weighty philosophical speculation. Successive campaign advisers had tried without success to get him to give briefer answers, but nothing had stemmed the logorrheic, the tsunami of subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides, the inexorable mudslide of anecdotage.”īuckley commits the errors he mocks, and that broad repetitiveness crops up again and again.
For example, on Dexter Mitchell, a Connecticut senator who serves as the book’s central antagonist: “His epic loquacity was not an asset.
And, when the humor wears thin, the shallowness of Buckley’s treatment become apparent.
BUCKLEY SUPREME COURTSHIP TV
And his jokes are indisputably competent: “It is a cliché in Washington that the most dangerous place to find yourself is between a politician and TV camera, but in the case of Senator Dexter Mitchell, the cliché had acquired a kind of Darwinian perfection.”īut the book’s subject – which is, ostensibly, the power that mass media exerts over our political life – is a vast and complicated one. There’s no question that Buckley is a skillful writer – he handles his material with ease and glib professionalism. Along the way she meets up with a number of stereotypes, from uber-WASP Graydon Clenndennyng to Latina caricature Ramona Alvilar. In short order, her marriage to a sleazy TV producer disintegrates, she takes up a liaison with the alcoholic chief justice and casts the critical vote in a decision determining the victor of a presidential election. “If Intelligent Design exists,” he has one character quip, “how would you explain the US Tax code?”Ĭartwright – a fiery and intelligent Texan appointed by President Donald Vanderdamp, a man made desperate by an ambitious senator’s successes in thwarting his nominees – finds life among the judicial elite is not without peril. This book involves the appointment of popular TV judge Perdita “Pepper” Cartwright to the Supreme Court, a scenario that would be hard to imagine without its salting of Buckley’s slightly musty humor. It displays all the elements familiar to his readers: breakneck pacing, characters with funny names (like Blyster Forkmorgan, a lawyer, and Crispus Galavanter, one of Buckley’s fictional justices), plenty of easy jokes and a harrumphing dissatisfaction with the trivialities of modern life. The latest political satire from Christopher Buckley will not disappoint his many fans.
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