Jack Cafferty:
Back and as Partisan as Ever
There are many books written about the state of current domestic and international politics. One of these such books is called Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream", written by Jack Cafferty. This book takes a decidedly partisan stance on what is wrong with the United States, and, as the title suggests, that is is either now or never that all of these problems are solved. There are several problems that Jack Cafferty identifies in his book, such as education, the national debt--and that's only naming a few. Throughout the book, Jack Cafferty uses his satire to make his point across all categories. The overlying fundamental principle of this book is that Repbulicans messed things up in the country very badly, and it's either Now or Never that the Democrats fix things. But who is Jack Cafferty? Jack Cafferty currently hosts "The Cafferty File" segment on CNN's The Situation Room. In order to fully understand who is and and his point of view, one has to consider what his life has been like. According to his prior book, he was orignally someone who was, for lack of a better word, the town drunk. This is not so much revealed in the book that is being written about, but it is revealed in his prequel book It's Getting Ugly Out There. In this book he describes how his heavy drinking wrecked his first marriage. The focus of Now or Never, though, is that he shows how he turned his life around when he met his (now-deceased) wife, Carol. In this book, he describes how he was a father to both his kids in his prior marriage and his most recent one. As though to prove his point about it being now or never to turn things around, Jack Cafferty titles the first part of his book about his latter part of life, "Fatherhood and Marriage Can Be a Sobering Experience." In this book, he really shows what a good father he was. For instance, he tells of a time when his children were yelled at about spilling water on the driveway. The result? He went over to the person in question and told him that if he ever spoke to his kids that way again, he would be in a world of hurt. But he was also protective of his kids. In another chapter entitled, "The Family's a Corporation and I hold all the Voting Shares," Cafferty explains that, when he came to school, his kids often regarded him as "obssessed, scary," and "totally terrifying" (87). But he also has a sense of humor, and most of it shines throughout the book. There were three such examples when it came to his family life. One such example was when his daughter, Julie, got engaged, he met her fiance on the golfing range and told him that "Here's the deal. We'll play eighteen holes, total strokes. If you win, I'll buuy you and Julie a new home as a wedding gife. But if I win, I want you to go away and never speak to my daughter again for the rest of your goddamn life."(93) Of course, this was all in good fun as explained later in the book. (Another such instance was when he did a segment on the Cafferty File. His wife, Carol, a woman who by all accounts in this book he absolutely adored, had accidentally taken a heartworm pill for the dog.He told the viewers the following:
"You think Wall Street is all that matters? I just got a call from my wife, who took our dog's heartworm pill by mistake and she's wondering if it's going to kill her or not. So I want to be sure to get out of here on time today because I've got to get home and take her for a walk." (177)
Another example is how he satirizes all of the accidents his daughter, Leslie, got into. He satirizes this by calling her "Leslie 'Crash' Cafferty." (183) Overall though, he is a good father, as he says, because he, "someone who cares," "is looking out for what's best for them. My tough love caused my younger kids to sweat things and wonder, How am I ever gonna explain this to my dad? I'll take that, if it produces the kind of your women they've become. Whether they behaved as they did out love, fear, intimidation, or simply not wanting to disappoint me, the ends justified the means for me." (182) Thus, from It's Getting Ugly Out There (his first book), to Now or Never (his second book), the morphing of a man from a person who can't wait to drink into someone who is an all-around family man is complete. It seems as though he uses this to say, "Hey, if I can do this, anyone (including this country) can do the same." The bottom line is that Cafferty's life has been the story of success, going from nothing to a prominent voice on his discontent about the way the government runs.
The first chapter of his book is called "Our Last Best Hope." In it, Cafferty explains how the economy went south and quickly. Some examples he uses are "mounting unemployment; inflation; soaring energy, food, and health-care costs; the housing bust; the subprime mortgage meltdown; and alarming rates of foreclosures, credit card defaults, and personal and business bankruptcy filings." (8) He blames a majority, if not all, of these problems on "Bush, Cheney & Co." for seeing "fit to turn it [the election] into nothing less than a referendum on our economic survival, and, more fundamentally, our future as a nation of laws and the inalienable rights of our citizens." (8-9) When he describes the eventual two candidates, Cafferty seems to disapprove of McCain's campaign. He shows this by calling Obama and what he promised "a stark alternative to a virtual third Bush term under McCain-Palin." (9) He then satirizes who Palin was, calling her a "moose-huntin', pro-life, 'drill, baby drill' oil exploration booster and lipstick-living pit bull of a hockey mom of five, not to mention ex-mayor of a town of six thousand now just twenty months into her term as governor;" (9) in other words, he thinks that Palin was not qualified. He reiterates the fact when he later calls on her--on the same page nonetheless--"a fresh, far-right voice of blue-collar, red-state, you-betcha, dam-tootin', take hatin' Joe Six-Pack America." (9)
Finally, he wraps up the chapter by concluding that if "Obama--possibly our last best hope--does fail in the end, then God help all of us." (15) This serves as a stark contrast compared to what his (asssumed) expectations of a McCain presidency would be. Our last best hope? Would he be saying the same thing if John McCain were elected? It seems unlikely; in fact, if one were to infer based on his comparisons between Obama and Palin, Jack Cafferty would probably show up on his Situation Room segment screaming, "We're all doomed!"
The next chapter of the book is entitled, "The Primaries: It Was Their Party and They Cried if They Wanted To," which chronicles the primaries before the 2008 election, more specifally the primaries between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. From the way he wrote about Obama in the last chapter, one would assume that he is either a Democrat, a liberal, or both. However, his bias is now more clearly defined as Pro-Obama. He extols Obama for the type of campaign he ran, calling it, "an energized, idealistic, machine, a base that became a youth-driven, Internet-age, poltical and fund-raising grass-roots, jugernaut." (17) He also goes on to say how Hillary Clinton. seemed to have a sense of entitlement, almost, that she "assumed it would be over the day after Super Tuesday, and she ran a fiscally [censored]-poor campaign." (17) Compare that with him describing what happened with Obama's campaign as "Obama's people outworked her, outspent her, outpoliticked her, and outsmarted her." (17) The last bit, "outsmarting her" almost seems to run parallel, though certainly not to the fullest extent, with Cafferty's assessment of Palin. He further introduces another event, Obama responding to his pastor, Rev. Wright, who said "God damn America," to whom "the media tried their damndest to tie" the presidential candiate to the pastor's "ravings" (23) Cafferty says that:
"Obama decided to address the Wright crises by penning his own stirring prime-time speech on race in society. He tried to let the old man down gently. He said, basically, that while he disagreed with some things Reverent Wright said, he had known him has an old uncle for seventeen years. Wright had led Obama to Jesus, officiated at his marriage to Michelle, and baptized their two daughters. Obama could no more disown him than he could his beloved white grandmother in Hawaii, a bank worker who sacrificed for him and help raise him, but who also confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and, he added, who more than once, 'uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
'These people are a part of me,' he [Obama] said, 'and they are a part of America, this country that I love." (24)
The end reaction of Cafferty to this speech is that the speech was, as he [Cafferty] says, a "terrific, eloquently crafted speech [that] seized an opportunity to tear down the walls between the races, evoking the visions of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy." (24) It certainly seems as though the Democrats--or more specifically, Obama--are Cafferty's savior for this country that he thinks is all messed up. Throughout all of this, Caferty occasionally mentions the Republican primary, but this may not be a bias; the Republican primary went on for a much shorter time than the Democratic primary did.
That is not to say that John McCain is spared by the scathing satire and criticism that is Jack Cafferty's assessment. He recounts an event when Democrats managed to put through a bill that would have made several million and hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans able to recieve rebate checks. According to Caffertry's assesment, McCain was put in between a rock in a hard place. He writes that:
"McCain knew that if he opposed the rebates, he would have denied benefits to many Social Securty recipients and to disabled veterans, in other words, Arizona consituents who neededthe money, If he voted yes, he would have no doubt further alienated Buh and the conservative base for not reining in spending (which Bus had been doing so brilliantly for seven-plus years.) (28)
The end result was that John McCain did not cast a vote because he was "lacking the stomach for the tough call," (29) and additonally says that "John McCain, the pilot of the Straight Talk EXpress, slithered under the rug like a cockroach waiting for the lights to go out." (29) Not only does Cafferty have an anti-Hillary, anti-McCain complex, but he also has a strong Pro-Obama complex as well.
The next chapter of the book is entitled "As the Iraquis Stand Up, It's Time for the United States to Clear Out," and focuses on one of the campaign's issues (once the primaries were over), namely the Iraq War. In this chapter, Cafferty once again makes Obama come out smelling like a rose, whereas MCain is portrayed as stumbling and fumbling throughout the entire chapter. When Obama goes overseas, the author describes what McCain does as "stumbling around the United States, strolling and golf-carting with former President George H.W. Byush, kikcin bricks, [censoring] nd moaning, making a moron out of himself...we heard him him confuse Somalia with Sudan and refer twice to Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased existence in 1993, and to 'President Putin of Germany,'" (38) amongst other missteps. While some of these criticitisms when McCain confuses someone or something with someone else, that makes sense. But he portrayal of McCain is scathing. But what is Jack Cafferty's portrayal of the war itself? Cafferty seems to believe the situation in Iraq, while militarily helped (he admits the Bush-led surge worked), the internal situation is crumbling. He talks of there possibly being a Sunni-led civil war, as he noted something on The Cafferty File:
"Iraq is the third most corupt country in the world, accrdoing to a recent ranking of 180 nations....unemployed men play $500 bribes to jon the police. Families build houses illegally on government land. And almost everything the government buys or sells, from painkillers for cancer to third grade textbooks, is turning up on the black market. Theres' a gorowing sense in Iraq that even as security has improve, the country has slipped to new depths of lawlesness. Some U.S. officials estimate that s much as one-third of whtt they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants wind up missing or stolen." (81).
Finally, who does he blame for the Iraq War? Unsurprisingly, the answer is (then-president) George W. Bush. He recounts an event when Bush was told that, in January 2003, that Saddam Hussein (the leader of Iraq) did not have Weapons of Mass Destructions, he responded by saying, "[censored] it, we're going in," (53)and then uses backdated intelligence to show why they should go into Iraq. A major drawback to this theory of his, however, is that he relies on source. Ron Suskind. Although this journalist he uses is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, one source does not mean that it is accurate. However, he is a journalist, and his job is to sensationalize and entertain, which is what he does when he hosts The Cafferty File. Therefore, this is in line with what his job is to do.
The fourth chapter of Now or Never is entitled, "China: The Global Superpower Goes for the Gold...Ours." Jack Cafferry's view on our problems with China is summed up perfectly in this:
"Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different [than that of other countries]. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them [sic] and the poisoned pet food, and export jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So...I think our relationship with China has changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last fifty years." (59)
The author further notes that we had always been on the "moral high ground" (65) with China when it came to our record on human and animal rights. However, Cafferty opines that that all changed with a visit to the Beijing Olympics by George W. Bush. According to Cafferty, Bush said that he would "continue to be candid about our belief that all people should have the freedom to to say what they think and worship as they choose. We tend to believe societies which allow the free expression of idea tend to be the most prosperous and peaceful." (65) The end result? Jack Cafferty says that China said, in so many words (and probably quite politely): "butt out." (65) The result of all this is that, according to Cafferty, "we didn't cjust lose our moral high ground with China. We have it away. We surrendered it. You can't run rendition prisons, abuse and illegally hold detainees at Gitmo, spy on your own citizens without court-ordered warrants, and expect ot serve as some sort of beacon for human rights and freedom around the world." (65). Because of all of these perceived facets of our government, Cafferty opines that the chance to get China to be a more free country as been ruined by own own hypocrisy. The unfortunate problem with this chapter is that, though (As he notes) China as repeatedly been found in violation of human rights, and the fact that they own most of the national debt, Cafferty doesn't seem to identify a solution to the problem, merely tracing a history of said problem.
The listing of these problems continues in chapter 7, entitled "Time to Raise Our Grades in Education, Immigration, and Energy." As the title says, these three issues are the problem INTERNALLY with the United States. Jack Cafferty outlines two main problems with education:
"Call it another piece of evidence that this once-great nation of ours is crumbling: half of us believe our schools deserve a C or a D for the job they do preparing kids for higher education and making a go of it as grownups in the workforce....the education crisis has especially deteriorated in our urban cultures, where the family unti most often leaves a single mother to raise the family." (117) Once again, though, he seems to favor Obama's ideas--however, this time he notes that Obama adopted an idea of McCain's during the campaign: school vouchers. Surely, since Obama was his favorite candidate, this must be the solution? However, he stops short of saying this. Up next is illegal immigation. The problem with illegal immgration, Cafferty argues, is that everyone wants the "Hispanic vote" (123) when running for office. As he says, "Despite whatever speechmaking candidates did--about reform, sealing our borders, amnest, detention and deportation, and the recent surge in crackdowns, especially in 'sanctuary cities'--nothing concrete was going to get done." (123) The problem with illegal immigration, he says, is that "we've got a crazy patchwork of overlapping federal lawas and tough state and local statuates pitting amnesty activists against restrictionists, with no new immigration laws to use as a template for enforcement." Here is a solution being presented to us for the first time: that we need to simplify our laws. The final issue he brings up is energy. He believes that offshore drilling, a McCain idea, seems to be a way to provide a temporary fix, but he doesn't seem willing to say that offshore drilling is the best way to go. He identifies this as a mortalweakness in America's economy:
"As it turns out, Osama bin LAden was the guy who saw all of this coming ten years ago where he called for $140-per-barrel oil as a way to inflict massive hurt on the United States. The terrorists may try to kill more people, but they technically don't have to fire another shot. Their job is essentially done--we're bleeding to death. It's as if we've opened an artery, while sitting in a bathtub, and until our leaders can figure out something to save us, it's just a question of how long before the life fluids run out of us." (142)
Throughout the book, Jack Caffery's satire is dripping and is disapproval is glaring. Also shining forth is Obama, a man that he believes will be able to fix everything, with George W. Bush starring as something akin to the devil. Some such issues he believes should be fixed are: illegal immigration, China's record on human rights and their owning of the national debt, as well as the failing of our education system. The author seems willing to list these problems, but more than several times he falls short in presenting solutions to these problems (the exception here is the illegal immigration issue). One thing that should be mentioned, however, is what is said in the introduction and that is that Jack Cafferty wants answers to questions he can't answer. So perhaps this is why he falls short of mentioning the solutions. Cafferty seems once or twice to agree with John McCain (such as in the school vouchers issue), but that seems to occur only when Obama agrees with McCain. The overlying message is that Obama is here to save the country, and he'd better save the country or else we'll never get out of the bad situation we are in today.
