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Book: When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden
Written by Bill Maher (New Millennium Press)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
This is a book designed for the coffee table to spark conversation. Of course Bill Maher was always famous on Politically Incorrect for striking sparks; in fact the whole point of his new book is to strike more sparks.
When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden refers to the fact that most Americans are being wasteful, undisciplined prima donnas in a time of war. Sure, it's not a time of World War, but still it's a kind of wartime that challenges all of us to make sacrifices. Unfortunately our poll-driven leaders seem to be uninterested in asking anyone to sacrifice any part of the luxury of our daily life, so common sense is lost in a flood of posturings and self-serving invective. That makes Bill mad, and he's venting on every page here.
Maher builds his book around the kind of posters the government used to put out during World War II to keep up morale and build good security habits during wartime. In World War II of course there was rationing of many kinds and average citizens were asked to do without. The book's title is an update of an old slogan - When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler - which reminded people that only one person in a car was a waste of gas, gas that the boys in the front lines needed. Maher updates many old posters for our paranoid new world and bolsters their themes with several dozen essays. It's a very thought provoking exercise.
Saving gas is just the starting point. It's no surprise that there's no topic too sacred to Bill, who writes things like, "It's great to be color blind and ethnic blind and religious blind, but blind is blind." He's decrying all the politically correct measures that make overstretched security resources check everyone, even harmless old grannies, instead of ones more likely to cause trouble. He also points out that terrorists launder money in the diamond trade, and because American men buy these rocks to give "to women in exchange for oral sex," we are supporting terrorism. And these are just the lightweight topics! Wait until you read his essays on religion and the right to free speech!
When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden is quite a different project from what you'd expect Bill to do after getting canned by ABC last summer, but it's completely worthy of your time. Who knows? Some of these sparks may make you catch fire.
© 2003 - Rusty Pipes