America (The Book)
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"I would certainly read this book if I were alive today, which, for all you geniuses out there, I am not."
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America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide To Democracy Inaction is a Satire, Parody, Pastiche of high-school textbooks about the history of American democracy and politics by the writers of The Daily Show.
Now has a sequel of sorts: Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide To The Human Race.
Not to be confused with I Am America (And So Can You)! by Stephen Colbert.
Tropes used in America (The Book) include:
- Animeland: Japan, according to this book.
- The Annotated Edition: The second printing of the book contains humorous "fact check" annotations in red ink.
- Attack of the Political Ad: An entire page in the chapter on campaigning is dedicated to satirizing negative political advertising as well as highlighting some of its most famous Real Life examples. Among the book's surreal claims, a year after Lyndon B. Johnson's "Daisy" ad from the 1964 US Presidential election suggested that his opponent Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war, Barry Goldwater started a nuclear war; Willie Horton was Michael Dukakis's running mate in 1988; and an underground smear campaign in ancient Rome depicted Caligula as "a pretty nice guy."
- Canada, Eh?: Canadian contributor Samantha Bee has a recurring feature called "Would You Mind If I Told You How We Do It in Canada?", mocking Canada's reputation for being polite, unassuming, and boring.
- Don't forget her own full length book, Pardon Me, but May I Interest You in a Book About Canada?, advertised in the back.
- Comically Missing the Point: The "corrections" in the Teachers' Edition.
- Crapsack World: The portrait of future America, replete with zombie politicians, evil children, no water, and rampant obesity.
- Dedication: To the huddled masses, keep yearnin'!
- Drinking Game: Invoked. Page 66 provides a number of drinking games for C-SPAN. For instance, when members of Congress are forced to argue politely instead of calling each other assholes, drink.
- That's called chugging...
- Fan Disservice: Naked pictures of the Supreme Court Justices (of course not real, but their heads are imposed on naked bodies appropriate for their age and shape). This got it banned from Wal-Mart.
- Fell Off the Back of a Truck: Source of swag for politicians who support organized labor.
- Footnote Fever: The sidenotes are to keep up the illusion of being a school textbook, which often have all sorts of bizarre infoboxes in the margins. The footnotes are unexplainable except by Rule of Funny, however.
- One of these was as follows.
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"Were You Aware?" That the term "Did You Know?" is copyrighted by another publisher? |
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- It also has a faux essay on "How to Filibuster" that's basically a page of footnotes, footnotes within footnotes, symbols that look like footnotes within footnotes...
- A later "Teacher's Edition" of the book adds another layer of commentary, in the form of angry red notes scrawled all through the book by a history professor who is almost but not quite aware that the book is comedy. He gives it a passing grade of B-.
- George Washington Slept Here: Among the list of George Washington's achievements is "All-time record holder for Most Places Slept."
- Hair of the Dog: The RNC schedule has a wake-up call at 7:15 am and "Hair of the Dog" at 7:16 am.
- Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Parodied; trial coverage is measured in "Buttafuocos".
- Historical Hilarity
- The Internet Is for Porn: It referred to the Internet as a source of communication, information, and "a staggering array of human sexual fetish".
- Moral Guardians: Pulled from the shelves at Wal-Mart because it included cut out paper dolls of the Supreme Court justices. Naked.
- Naked People Are Funny: The aforementioned naked cut out paper dolls of US Supreme Court Justices.
- Note From Ed
- People's Republic of Tyranny: Lampshaded in the section on Africa; the Democratic Republic of the Congo is noted as one of these, and apparently gets worse as the "democratic republic" part of the name is further emphasized.
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Central Africa's largest nation has grown more oppressive over the decades, and its name has kept pace." |
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- Robot War: The Constitutional Robocracy appears to take place after one.
- Sarcasm Mode: Frequently.
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1300 BC: God gives Ten Commandments to Israelites, making them His Chosen People and granting them eternal protection under Divine Law. Nothing bad ever happens to Jews again. |
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- Sensual Slavs: The section on Russia notes the Russian Paradox that young Russian women are beautiful while old Russian women are hideous. A picture comparison purports to show a young beauty queen before and after she crosses the threshold, becoming an old crone in the span of two weeks.
- Sequelitis: Invoked. According to the book, John Locke's Second Treatise on Government was panned by critics "who saw it as a flimsy pretext to bring back the characters from the First Treatise".
- Some of My Best Friends Are X: There's a section listing the most controversial Supreme Court nominees. One of them is (fictitious) Floyd Burnington, who was a member of the KKK. The book notes: "But some of his best friends were... Actually, they were all white."
- Strawman News Media: The media get a huge Take That in the form of a one-page rant about how they have abdicated their responsibilities of fact-checking government processes in favor of ratings. Namely, "'Was President Bush successful in convincing Americans to go to war with Iraq?' Who gives a shit!? How about whether he was telling the truth?" That and the fact that they spent 3 hours outside of the courthouse for Kobe Bryant's rape trial to hear the hearing date, as well as coverage of the last season of Friends -- again, while a war was in the making, and one already underway in Afghanistan.
- Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The more pleasant and optimistic an African government/country sounds the more dangerous and depraved it is. The wording could apply to Japan as well.
- Take That: A section for mock political cartoons aims specifically at comics like the conservative-leaning Mallard Fillmore and the liberal-leaning Doonesbury. The MF stand-in ends the strip with "Oops! I forgot to tell a joke", a stab at Fillmore's tendency to go on Author Tracts - and faux-Doonesbury is simply three panels of the White House with absolutely nothing happening, mocking the strip's dry penchant for abstract political metaphor.
- Your Mom: According to the book, Senator McCarthy responded to Joseph N. Welch's famous question "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" with "Indeed I do, sir, only I seem to have left it on your mother's nightstand."