The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder by Mark Crispin Miller (New York University)
They misunderestimated me.President George W. Bush It seems like too easy a target, too cheap a laugh, but Mark Crispin Miller, with the deftly trenchant wit that always distinguishes his writing, uses the blunders and malapropisms of George W. Bush to make a larger point about the way in which we elect our presidents. Miller places Bush in the context of other notorious dunces-in-chief, and shows him indisputably in a league of his own. The book is a raucously funny ridewhether it's Bush envisioning a foreign-handed foreign policy or Miller skewering vociferous cultural conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney for their silence on Bush's particular West Texas version of Ebonicsbut there is also a strong undercurrent of outrage. Only because our elections have become so dependent on television and its emphatic emptiness, Miller argues, can a man of such sublime and complacent ignorance assume the highest office in the land. To quote Bush himself, It's not the way America is all about.