Global Village Idiot: Dubya, Dunces, and One Last Word Before You Vote

by John O'Farrell

Winner of the Best Columnist of the Year at the British Liars’ Awards and Britain’s finest satirist, O’Farrell takes dead aim in Global Village Idiot at cell phones, awards ceremonies, genetic sheep splicers, America’s right wing cabal of dunces, dunderheads, dimwits, and the Big ‘D’ himself. “Just when we thought the lawlessness in Iraq was over,” O’Farrell observes, “even more blatant incidents of looting have begun. With handkerchiefs masking their faces, two rioters roughly the height of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld kicked in the gates of the largest oilfield and grabbed the keys of the gasoline trucks. ‘Yee-haw! It’s all ours! Millions of barrels of the stuff’ they laughed. ‘Yup!’ added the leader ‘ and this mask guarantees my anonymousinity!’ So after all these years there really is such a person as the Thief of Baghdad. Except strangely his accent sounded vaguely Texan.”

A writer for the groundbreaking television show Spitting Image and contributor to the screenplay for the hit movie Chicken Run, O’Farrell meticulously researched his conclusions “by spending five minutes on the internet and then giving up.” And while O’Farrell’s sharpest barbs and stingers have often been written to come out of the mouths of grotesque puppets and Claymation chickens, this time around he keeps the best lines for himself: ‘‘With the election of the 43rd President of the United States, the global village is complete,” O’Farrell writes. “’It has its own global village idiot.’”

Genres: Humor, Comedy, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

John O'Farrell is the author of four novels: The Man Who Forgot His Wife, May Contain Nuts, This Is Your Life and The Best a Man Can Get. His novels have been translated into over twenty languages and have been adapted for radio and television. He has also written two best-selling history books: An Utterly Impartial History of Britain and An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain, as well as a political memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and three collections of his column in The Guardian. A former comedy scriptwriter for such productions as Spitting Image, Room 101, Murder Most Horrid and Chicken Run, he is founder of the satirical website NewsBiscuit and can occasionally be spotted on such TV programmes as Grumpy Old Men, Question Time and Have I Got News for You.

Reviews

[Pinko Palest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated, parochial, not very funny, based mainly on what was then in the telly. Also, populist, as in Neanderthal. Or perhaps it's merely a book about a time we'd rather forget, the time of Blair on heat

[Alexander Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny as fudge. 😂

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, I was entertained reading John O'Farrell's collected columns from the turn of the century. They are pretty parochially British political but on the whole they have aged well, although I had a jolly good laugh at a piece on Ericsson the phone manufacturer's woes, saying that the love affair with mobiles was over and people just aren't that interested in surfing the net on the go. Ahem.

Occasionally I felt he'd wandered across the line between legitimate humour and just plain ad hominem nastiness but perhaps that is because the targets have, most bizarrely, since become National Treasures and/or private sadnesses revealed. I do remember feeling at the time that those individuals were pretty nasty pieces of work themselves. At one point he almost had me signed up as a party member and I did feel he made some good points about voting and coping with the fact that no party will behave as you would wish 100% of the time.

As this was my bag book, it has taken a while to read. I started round Thanksgiving. On 25th November 1999, John O'Farrell published the following prediction: Given current trends it is quite likely that Thanksgiving Day will be celebrated in this country within the next 20 years. It falls conveniently between Hallowe'en and Christmas and would fill a yawning gap in shop's promotional timetables that currently has Christmas stretching right back to early Autumn. American consumerism has always been one step ahead. Instead of spending eight weeks gearing their customers up to buy one turkey, they slot in an extra festival at the end of November so everyone has to buy another four weeks beforehand. It cannot be long before British shops try this scam on us" And so, in 2014, it has come to pass.

[Xanthi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read a few books by this author now - fiction and non-fiction. I like his humorous style. I did struggle with this book, though. If you are not British or have never lived there, a lot of this book will leave you baffled or bored, as you will not be familiar with the british politicians he writes about. The parts that are not specifically about party politics are easier to follow and more interesting, though these are few and far in between. The part about Phoenix the calf and mad cow disease was just downright ignorant and annoying. Overall, the book was not as interesting to me as I hoped it would be.

[BookAmbler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read a dozen or so pieces... not my thing it would seem. Didn't laugh at all and wasn't tempted to carry on reading to find the one amusing topic. Back cover says it's 'highly readable and very funny'. Better pass it on to someone more politically minded and with a sense of humour, ha ha =;o)

[Benedict Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obvious jokes, told well.