Just Read: Idiot Proof by Francis Wheen

This is another one of those books, very popular these days, that insists that large numbers of named people are complete idiots, and then enumerates the reasons why. Idiot Proof is somewhat less specifically political than the usual book of this nature; the standard is to start blasting away at the party opposite and not give up until you've piled up enough ammo to bind as a book, but Wheen doesn't seem to have a side to defend. He deplores just about everyone. I tend to feel a bit that way myself, so I was hoping to love Idiot Proof, but the final effect is just to make him seem grumpy. If you're not for anything, being against things doesn't mean as much. And he's not even against things as strongly as I'd hoped; he says that everything is bad, but he doesn't really lay into anyone along the way.

I expected to like this book a lot more than I did; there's something flat and unsatisfying about it. Wheen doesn't seem to have a master plan to set things right, which books like this really need. (If the world's going to hell in a handbasket, the thing to do is wrench it back onto the right course, not spend your time complaining about the scenery.) He complains about politicians, self-help authors, bad business practices, and a few celebrities, but it's mostly focused on large-scale stupidity. And his style tends to turn that into "My, everyone but thee and me is awfully stupid, eh what?"

This book was a bestseller when originally published in the UK (as How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions, a much better title than the generic US one), and there is something very British in its stiff-upper-lip manner. Wheen does seem to idolize the US, though, or perhaps that's the result of some judicious edits for the American market. Perhaps understatement works better on his side of the pond, but a book about utter stupidity doesn't seem to me to be the place for understatement in the first place.

I find it hard to place Wheen politically after reading this book, which is very unexpected (usually, "all those people are stupid" books scream their political biases). I know what he dislikes, which is just about everything, but not at all what he likes. He blasts Blair and Thatcher just about equally, and apparently has disliked every US President of the post-war era. I suspect he's a leftist of some kind (especially since he also wrote a biography of Karl Marx), but you really can't tell.

This was a disappointment. Anyone who has an urge to read this book would be better served by going back to the great Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which is well over a hundred years old but sadly timelier than ever. Wheen's business chapters are OK, but their point was made better and more entertainingly in F'd Companies (which I'm coming to think is the essential book on the '90s economy, or maybe the '90s in general; its style says as much about the times as its substance). And his mild peevishness (it doesn't rise to the level of anger, honestly) doesn't hold a candle to the books of Joe Queenan. I'll also recommend a similar title of a generation ago, The Trouble with Nowadays, which was written from the POV of a massively tactless reactionary (and which I was hoping would be something of a model for Idiot Proof). For political types, you'd be better off picking up Al Franken or Bernard Goldberg (depending on your inclination). This is just the kind of book that makes you wish you were reading other, better books.