cover image SORE WINNERS (and the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America

SORE WINNERS (and the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America

John Powers, . . Doubleday, $24.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-385-51187-2

From Bush's infamous "how dare you ask Chirac a question in French" press conference to Colin and Condi as tokenism writ large, L.A. Weekly deputy editor Powers marshals a host of sometimes obvious, media-based critiques in portraying Bush & co. as "sore winners," the products of a populist, social Darwinist culture where doing what you want because you can is OK. Episodic chapters veer in too many directions, incorporating pre-cooked chunks of presidential media history, myriad literary and pop culture allusions (everything from Robert Musil and Preston Sturges to Alice Sebold and Courtney Love) and even Powers's decidedly layman's assessment of what he deems (sore winner) Rumsfeld's lack of planning for postwar Iraq. But Powers's deconstructions of Bush-era political coverage, though too predictable when dealing with the right, have marked range and subtlety when discussing the left's attempts at fighting back. He's best, though, on the sore winner–effect writ large, describing a kind of flip side of the late '90s Bobos in Paradise : a mean-spirited, you-deserve-it mentality that Powers finds in everything from American Splendor to American Idol . Powers can be very funny (as when advocating an "irony enema" for commentator Roger Rosenblatt), but scion Bush as sore winner isn't news, and the book is too thick with kitchen-sink ruminations to work as a whole. Agent, Bonnie Nadell. (On sale Aug. 3)