It's Good to Laugh a Little during all this Political Tension and Financial Crisis...

I have been amazed at the number of people watching YouTube, Googling, and sending around e-mails of Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin. Along with all the other political satire going around from Saturday Night Live and other sources.  

I understand because it gets tiring listening to the ads, debates, and CNN night after night and trying to make conscientious decisions. Sometimes I wonder if my opinion matters at all. I enjoy getting a little comic relief from all the serious issues and the stress of trying to understand what is happening in our country and what it means for our future.  

This past week, I have enjoyed reading Christopher Buckley's novel Boomsday. The book is a political satire that has an uncanny ability to point out the absurdity of some of the political issues of our day.      

Boomsday is an especially fun read for bloggers. The zany heroine is a late night blogger who changes the world through her blog entries that are eagerly followed by her doting audience.  

I doubt my "Mommy Blog" with photos of my children will ever have that kind of impact, but the idea of a female blogger changing the world through her blog is certainly fun and appealing.  

Here is a little snippet about the book from Publisher's Weekly:

 Reviewed by Jessica Cutler: It's the end of the world as we know it, especially if bloggers are setting the national agenda. In his latest novel, Buckley imagines a not-so-distant future when America teeters on the brink of economic disaster as the baby boomers start retiring. Buckley takes on such pressing (however boring) topics as Social Security reform and fiscal solvency, as does his protagonist. And get this: she's a blogger. Buckley's heroine is "a morally superior twenty-nine-year-old PR chick" who blogs at night about the impending Boomsday budget crisis. Of course, "she was young, she was pretty, she was blonde, she had something to say." She has a large, doting audience that eagerly awaits her every blog entry. And her name? Cassandra. And the name of her blog? Also Cassandra. Of course, Buckley doesn't let his allusion get by us:"She was a goddess of something," another character struggles to remember, which gives his heroine the opportunity to educate us about the significance of her namesake."Daughter of the king of Troy. She warned that the city would fall to the Greeks," she explains. "Cassandra is sort of a metaphor for catastrophe prediction. This is me. It's what I do." So Cassandra, doing what she does, starts by calling for "an economic Bastille Day" and her minions take to destroying golf courses in protest. Cassandra grabs headlines and magazine covers, and the president starts wringing his hands over what she might blog about next..."

The book is definitely irreverent and even offensive at times, but if you can take it tongue in cheek like the Tina Fey depictions of Sarah Palin then it is a fun romp through the political landscape of our time. 

Here is a link to the New York times Book Review of Boomsday. 

Happy Reading!