Give Hate A Chance

What segue could possibly connect these two?

One recent evening, after a longish day freelancing for MTV, I sat upon the couch and spent three hours reading Sarah Vowell's "Take the Cannoli." Subtitled "Stories From the New World," this book had been highly recommended to me, with often hyperbolic praise. To call an author "funnier than David Sedaris" is an inflammatory claim, and after thorough comparison I can only respond: eh, not so much.

Vowell's strongest work focuses on history, a subject upon which she can often be found expounding on National Public Radio. The stories about her father's cannon and Chicago's Michigan Avenue Bridge were quite good. Ironically, the past is also the subject of her weakest essay, focussing on the Cherokee Trail of Tears. In discussing this sad chapter of our nation's history, Vowell reveals an almost pathological hatred of Andrew Jackson that sends the essay completely off the rails. She really, really hates Andrew Jackson (yes, the guy on the twenty). At first I was a little baffled by this; it's not often you hear people walking around declaiming "Curse thee, Martin Van Buren!" Seems if you were one of the first 25 presidents, you mostly get a free ride these days. But Vowell really has it in for Andrew Jackson. Apparently, get this, a white man broke a truce with Native Americans, then caused a great many of them to die. The way she presents it, this comes off like one of the great exceptions of history.

Perhaps I'm being too tough on Sarah. In this cacophonous day and age, maybe we need to vent some aggression at the high-profile and mighty. I'm not suggesting this in a "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" way, but, as The Jefferson Airplane might say: "Wouldn't you love somebody to hate?" I'm game for a try. I will focussing some of my frustrations with everyday life at San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili. Here goes...dumb, Bronson-Pinchot-looking motherf****r. Someday your flopping and fakery shall come back to haunt you!