100
Rick and Kathy Hilton
OKAY, PARIS HILTON has an excuse. She's a moron. But her parents can't be let off so easily.
If they gave Nobel Prizes for the mom and dad who raised the most vapid, empty-headed, inane, hollow, vain, tasteless, self-centered, useless twerp in the entire country —maybe in the entire world —Rick and Kathy Hilton would be on their way to Stockholm to pick up the medal.
Paris wears designer T-shirts with slogans like "Got Blow?" and has said, "Wal-Mart? What's that? Do they, like, make walls there?" She's made headlines for shoving her way to the head of a wash-room line, and when upbraided for her rudeness, said she just wanted to look at herself in the mirror. And, as everyone knows, she's a big movie star —if you count having sex in a home video that has made its way around the world on the Internet as being a movie star.
But Rick and Kathy's little celebutante insists she's misunderstood. The bad press "sucks," she pouts, and she thinks that "people are mean."
Congratulations, Rick and Kathy. You did a fine job. People are mean —especially to heir-heads like your daughter.
99
Matthew Lesko
MATTHEW LESKO.
Name doesn't ring a bell, you say. Maybe this will help: You're watching cable television, probably late at night, a commercial comes on, and there's a "grown-up" man wearing big eyeglasses, a black suit emblazoned with lime green question marks, and a lime green bow-tie emblazoned with lime green question marks, and while he's prancing around in front of the Capitol building in Washington, he's shouting in a high-pitched voice about all the "free money" the government has… just for you!
Want $100,000 to start a business in your own house? Lesko tells you how to get it. How about $75,000 to remodel that house? You say you always wanted to open a bookstore? The government's got $140,000 for you, and Matthew Lesko will help you get your grubby little hands on it. And, of course, there's all that "free money to pay your bills."
Right, that Matthew Lesko! The sort of embarrassing doofus you pray your daughter will never bring home and introduce as her fiancé. So, no, as evil goes, he's not exactly in the same league as Osama bin Laden.
Yet this character, who has devoted what passes for his adult life to peddling his books and CDs on how to get "free college money" and "free stuff for moms" and "free money to change your life" does stand for something disheartening that's happened to this country in recent years. Once, it was understood by almost everyone that there is no free lunch and that you got yours, as the old commercial had it, "the old-fashioned way"—you earned it! But now, this joker caters to a mindset that believes there's not only free lunch, but free dinner, and free midnight snacks, and a takeout bag if you're still hungry later on. Matthew Lesko is the Pied Piper for way too many Americans who are interested only in themselves.
Because, of course, the "free money" Lesko is talking about isn't really free at all. It's "tax money," which, in his way of thinking, is "everybody's money," otherwise known as "nobody's money."
A lot of us would argue that it's bad enough that slimy politicians take our money in the first place so they can hand it out as "free money" to somebody who wants to open a pizza parlor in Akron. But do we really need Matthew Lesko making himself the go-between, the conduit, between our money and the pizzeria?
And then, in December 2004, the New York State Consumer Protection Board issued a report suggesting that Mr. Lesko may have been —oh, let's be generous —exaggerating in his commercials.
For example: Lesko once claimed that a researcher was given $500,000 by the government "to travel the world." Turns out, the researcher was a physicist from Georgetown who won a grant from the National Science Foundation.
For another example: Lesko has said his books tell you how to get free car repairs. Actually he was talking about an automobile recall by the manufacturer.
And then there was the pitch about how you could get $400 a week if you were out of work. True enough. It's called "unemployment insurance."
"Lesko is now promoting a new book… by claiming that the federal government has more than $350 billion in hidden money that ordinary people can use to pay their credit-card bills and get out of debt," said Teresa Santiago, the chairwoman of the Consumer Protection Board. "That claim is simply not true."
On his Web site, Lesko shot back: "I provide my customers with legitimate sources of government money for business, education, housing and, yes, to pay bills."
COPYRIGHT © 2005 BY MEDIUM COOL COMMUNICATIONS INC
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The number one New York Times bestselling author of Bias delivers another bombshell--this time aimed at ... 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America No preaching. No pontificating. Just some uncommon sense about the things that have made this country great--and the culprits who are screwing it up. Bernard Goldberg takes dead aim at the America Bashers (the cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at "ordinary" Americans) ... the Hollywood Blowhards (incredibly ditzy celebrities who think they're smart just because they're famous) ... the TV Schlockmeisters (including the one whose show has been compared to a churning mass of maggots devouring rotten meat) ... the Intellectual Thugs (bigwigs at some of our best colleges, whose views run the gamut from left wing to far left wing) ... and many more. Goldberg names names, counting down the villains in his rogues' gallery from 100 all the way to 1--and, yes, you-know-who is number 37. Some supposedly "serious" journalists also made the list, including the journalist-diva who sold out her integrity and hosted one of the dumbest hours in the history of network television news. And there are those famous miscreants who have made America a nastier place than it ought to be--a far more selfish, vulgar, and cynical place. But Goldberg doesn't just round up the usual suspects we have come to know and detest. He also exposes some of the people who operate away from the limelight but still manage to pull a lot of strings and do all sorts of harm to our culture. Most of all, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is about a country where as long as anything goes, as one of the good guys in the book puts it, sooner or later everything will go. This is serious stuff for sure. But Goldberg will also make you laugh as he harpoons scoundrels like the congresswoman who thinks there aren't enough hurricanes named after black people, and the environmentalist to the stars who yells at total strangers driving SUVs--even though she tools around the country in a gas-guzzling private jet. With Bias, Bernard Goldberg took us behind the scenes and exposed the way Big Journalism distorts the news. Now he has written a book that goes even further. This time he casts his eye on American culture at large--and the result is a book that is sure to become the voice of all those Americans who feel that no one is speaking for them on perhaps the most vital issue of all: the kind of country in which we want to live.
