Book Review: No Way to Treat a First Lady, by Christopher Buckley (2002)

Paperback cover of No Way to Treat a First Lady, by Christopher Buckley, 2002.

Novelist Christopher Buckley

As the political atmosphere seems to get worse and worse by the day, it feels almost quaint to recall the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Bill and Hillary! Bob Dole! W! Al Gore! Novelist Christopher Buckley does an excellent job conjuring up that era in his 2002 novel No Way to Treat a First Lady. In the novel, First Lady Elizabeth Tyler MacMann wakes up to find a dead president next to her in bed. The evening before, the couple had quarreled over the President’s late-night visit to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he had an assignation with singer and movie star Babette Van Anka. After questioning, the First Lady is arrested for the assassination of her late husband. 

No Way to Treat a First Lady leads us through the “Trial of the Millennium” that inevitably ensues. The First Lady has entrusted one of the most famous defense attorneys in the country, Boyce “Shameless” Baylor to defend her. Awkward backstory: Boyce was engaged to Beth in law school, but she broke it off when she met the future President. Boyce has cycled through four marriages, the latest one lasting all of six months. As Boyce says, “We were blissfully happy the first two months.” (p.40) Boyce’s current flame is Perri Pettengill, who hosts a legal talk show called Hard Gavel. Perri is known for wearing very tight sweaters. She’s become so famous that “Tom Wolfe had mentioned her in an essay, calling her ‘the Lemon Tort.’” (p.14) 

I won’t spoil any more of the plot, but Buckley does an excellent job of winding this improbable case through its many twists and turns. Buckley is especially adept and handling the back and forth of the courtroom scenes. You could make the argument that there’s no one to really root for in the novel, but once Buckley compared Beth to Natalie Wood, she instantly had my sympathy. And in my head, I had cast Alec Baldwin as Boyce Baylor, so I found pretty much anything Baylor said to be quite hilarious. 

There are many humorous lines sprinkled throughout No Way to Treat a First Lady. The press’ nickname for Beth was “Lady Bethmac,” and Buckley gets off a great Macbeth pun by naming a Secret Service agent Woody Birnam. 

My other favorite lines from the book include:

“Hypocrisy is a prerogative of the press but must under no circumstances be tolerated in politicians.” (p.24)

“Sometimes the American Dream, like God, works in mysterious ways.” (p.113)

I also laughed heartily at Boyce’s list of Baby Boomer accomplishments: “Disco, junk bonds, silicone implants, colorized movies, the whole concept of stress as a philosophical justification for self-indulgence.” (p.133) 

Fans of Buckley’s other Washington, D.C. satires should note that John O. Banion, the lead character in Little Green Men, briefly appears, as does Nick Naylor, the unscrupulous lobbyist from Thank You for Smoking. Naylor has taken a job as a publicist for Babette Van Anka, a position that is more and more fraught with danger as the novel progresses. 

Buckley relentlessly skewers the ridiculousness of the press throughout the book. There are also many opportunities for the skewering of the legal profession, and one of my favorite quotes was this one: 

“There are few spectacles more pathetic than a roomful of otherwise responsible people trying to squirm out of a civic duty enshrined in Magna Carta as one of the signal boons of democracy. On the other hand, who in his right mind wants to serve on a jury?” (p.66) 

As someone who has served on a jury, I can identify with that sentiment. 

If you’re looking for an escape from the current political climate, you’ll enjoy No Way to Treat a First Lady.

Book Review: But Enough About You, by Christopher Buckley (2014)

Cover of But Enough About You, by Christopher Buckley, 2014.

Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley’s most recent book is But Enough About You, a collection of essays he has written for various publications over the last 15 years. Buckley is one of my favorite writers, and I devoured But Enough About You with delight. The pieces collected in But Enough About You are a true grab-bag, running the gamut from humorous to serious. However, the essays collected here work well together, even though they span a decade and a half. As a writer, Buckley is consistently funny, witty, and smart. His prose entertains and informs, as he sprinkles witty bon mots throughout. 

But Enough About You also includes more serious pieces, and for me these were some of the highlights of the book. Buckley’s essay about visiting Auschwitz with his father was quite moving, as was his tribute to his late friend Christopher Hitchens. There is an excellent essay on Buckley’s relationship with President George H.W. Bush. Buckley was a speechwriter for then-Vice President Bush from 1981 until 1983, and his admiration for Bush is clear. Another fascinating personal essay was “Dear Joe,” about Buckley’s correspondence and friendship with Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22. My only criticism of “Dear Joe” is that while Heller’s letters to Buckley are quoted, Buckley’s letters to Heller are not. Buckley may have thought that his letters would not be of interest, but he sells himself short, as his authorial gifts are many. 

I was particularly fascinated by Buckley’s 2012 essay on the death of Gore Vidal. Here a little historical backstory is required. Back in 1968, Vidal and William F. Buckley, leading light of the conservative movement and Christopher’s father, squared off in a series of televised debates during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During one debate, Buckley and Vidal got into a rather heated exchange, with Vidal calling Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley responding in kind by calling Vidal a “queer.” The following year, both men wrote articles for Esquire magazine about the event. Vidal’s article had some rather nasty things to say about Buckley, who ended up suing Vidal and Esquire for libel. Buckley won the case, and with it the eternal enmity of Gore Vidal. While Buckley refrained from criticizing Vidal in print, Vidal never missed a chance to lay into Buckley.  In keeping with his cranky nature, Vidal had only nasty things to say upon Buckley’s death in 2008. Adding insult to injury, as was his wont, Vidal also insulted Christopher Buckley, calling him “creepy” and “brain dead.” Christopher Buckley has every right to hate Gore Vidal and say nasty things about him when he died in 2012. But Buckley doesn’t, and instead crafted an intelligent essay that acknowledged both Vidal’s strengths as a writer and his faults as a human being. As a fan of both William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, I can safely say that while politically I agree much more with Vidal, William F. Buckley was twice the man Gore Vidal was. 

Ironically, But Enough About You doesn’t include what might be Christopher Buckley’s most famous, or notorious, short essay, “Sorry Dad, I’m Voting for Obama,” which was published on The Daily Beast website in October, 2008. Buckley hated the title of the piece, and he demanded that the editors change it. (They didn’t.) In the essay, Buckley explained the reasons why he was voting for Barack Obama rather than John McCain in the 2008 election. Buckley’s reasons were quite rational, as he wrote, “Obama has in him…the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.” So as to not unduly antagonize the right wing, Buckley purposely did not publish the piece in the pages of National Review, the magazine his father started, and for whom he had recently begun writing a column. Nevertheless, the piece caused the right wing to virulently turn against Buckley, and it forced him to resign from National Review. The kerfuffle over Buckley’s piece is a good example of how the Republican party has purged itself of any dissenting voices. In the essay Buckley quotes his father as saying, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, now it’s the Tea Party and their kooks separating the Right from anyone with half a brain. 

If you’re a fan of Christopher Buckley’s satirical novels, you will surely enjoy But Enough About You, and the humor of essays like “The Origin and Development of the Lobster Bib-Volume II: Rome to the Present Era,” and “How to Write Witty E-Mail (Hint: Pretend They’re Telegrams),” a 1998 essay that was the first piece I ever read by Christopher Buckley.

Book Review: Little Green Men, by Christopher Buckley (1999)

Little Green Men, by Christopher Buckley, 1999.

Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley’s 1999 novel Little Green Men does a great job at capturing the millennial craziness America experienced in those closing years of the 20^th century. The main character in Little Green Men is pundit and talk-show host John O. Banion, a typical Beltway insider who has an exaggerated sense of his own self-importance. As the novel opens, Banion has just finished grilling the President on his TV show, and he’s set to moderate the Presidential debates in the fall. 

Seemingly on the opposite end of the Washington spectrum from Banion is Nathan Scrubbs, who works for MJ-12, the top secret government organization that orchestrates all of the alien and UFO sightings in the United States. MJ-12 began during the Cold War: “The idea was simple enough: convince Stalin that UFO’s existed and that the United States was in possession of their technology.” (P.31) Eventually, the mission of MJ-12 expanded, as the leaders in charge realized the organization could prove useful in other ways: “...MJ-12 could serve another, even higher purpose: keeping the taxpaying U.S. citizenry alarmed about the possibility of invasion from outer space, and therefore happy to fund expansion of the military-aerospace complex.” (P.31) In order to keep citizens believing in aliens, MJ-12 oversees alien “abductions,” which are actually carried out by humans, called “baggers,” wearing costumes. MJ-12 has been very successful in its goals, but they deliberately don’t abduct famous people, as they don’t want to attract too much attention. But as Scrubbs drunkenly watches Banion’s talk show one Sunday morning, he impulsively decides to override the computer algorithm and authorizes an abduction of Banion. 

While practicing his golf swing one day at Burning Bush Country Club, Banion finds that his golf balls are strangely veering off into the woods at seemingly impossible angles. When he goes to investigate, he sees the flashing lights of an alien spacecraft. After he’s “abducted,” Banion spins his initial ramblings about seeing aliens as a head injury from a golf cart accident. When Banion doesn’t go public with his experience, Scrubbs orders him abducted again. After his second experience with aliens, Banion goes public in a big way about his experiences. As Banion starts talking about UFOs and aliens, he finds his image as a Washington insider ruined. As Banion’s lecture agent tells him, “You know what these groups want. The Washington insider stuff, what it’s like to have the president for dinner, what Cokie Roberts smells like. And you give them The War of the Worlds.” (P.69) But just as Banion’s wife and Washington friends dump him, the UFO community embraces him, and he meets Roz Well, an attractive editor of a UFO magazine. 

What will happen to John O. Banion? Will he ever command large lecture fees again? Will his new TV show Saturday, which focuses on UFOs and aliens, become as big a hit as his old TV show, Sunday? Will he ever be able to consummate his relationship with Roz? Will he be able to discover the truth about who’s behind all of the alien abductions? Will his “Millennium Man March” on Washington be a success or a resounding failure? For the answers, you’ll have to read this entertaining satire. 

Christopher Buckley is a satirist with deadly aim, and his arrows all hit their targets in Little Green Men. There are wonderful little jokes strewn about throughout the novel, like how Banion’s book about the welfare state is called Screwing the Poor. The sponsor of his TV show Sunday is an electric company called Ample Ampere. As Banion’s TV show Saturday debuts, Buckley writes, “Except for the name, time slot, announcer’s voice, theme music, set, graphics, guests, and sponsor, Banion’s new television show was just like his old one.” (P.139) If you find these jokes funny, you’ll be positively delighted with Little Green Men.

Book Review: "Thank You For Smoking," by Christopher Buckley (1994)

"Thank You For Smoking," by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley’s 1994 satirical novel “Thank You For Smoking” is still a trenchant and wickedly funny book, even 20 years after it was first published. “Thank You For Smoking” tells the story of Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobby spokesperson, or “smokesman,” as he is often dubbed. Naylor works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, which pumps out highly dubious studies that purport to show no link between smoking and cancer. Naylor delights in the challenge of arguing the seemingly inarguable, and some of the funniest scenes in the book are when Buckley paints Naylor in a corner, like having him confronted with a young cancer patient on “Oprah,” and seeing Naylor wriggle out of the jam. Naylor would be even more at home in 2014 rather than 1994, as the proliferation of cable news and the Internet has often proved that dubious arguments can sound plausible when they come from attractive visages. 

Buckley has a lot of fun with the lunch meetings that Naylor has with his friends Polly and Bobby Jay, who are spokespeople for the liquor and firearms industries. They call themselves the “Mod Squad,” with mod standing for “merchants of death.” Like Nick, Polly and Bobby Jay are somewhat defensive about their jobs, so they take great comfort in each other, often arguing about who has the worst job.

 “Thank You For Smoking” follows Nick as he battles not only smoking opponents, but also his boss BR, who isn’t very fond of Nick, and his comely co-worker Jeannette, who is clearly angling to take Nick’s job. However, Nick has someone on his side because “The Captain,” an old man who is one of the most powerful men in the tobacco industry, thinks very highly of him. Nick becomes the Captain’s golden boy, and gets sent out to Hollywood to convince movie executives to feature more smoking in their films. An assistant to a big-shot producer tells Nick:

“We’ve got this CIA movie deal project in the works, it’s going to be very big. The idea is the CIA thinks Franklin Roosevelt is too cozy with Stalin, so they kill him so Truman will get in and nuke the Japanese. Fabulous Film.”

“Sounds great. But I don’t think the CIA existed back in 1945.”

“It didn’t?”

“I think it started in ’47.”

“It’s a little late to change the whole premise.” 

The movie producer eventually decides that the best way to promote cigarettes in a movie is to set it in the future. But Nick hesitates, asking, “But don’t you explode if you light up in a spaceship? All that oxygen?”

“It’s the twenty-sixth century. They’ve thought that through. That can be fixed with one line of script.”

But things start to fall apart for Nick when he is kidnapped and nearly killed as his kidnappers cover his body with nicotine patches, intending to give Nick a lethal dose of nicotine. However, Nick survives the attack. “Dr. Williams said that, ironically, it was his smoking that had probably saved him. That many patches on a nonsmoker would almost certainly have brought about cardiac arrest sooner.” 

Nick starts reaching crisis mode as he’s enjoying the company of Jeannette, and also a female reporter who he is unable to resist. The FBI starts investigating Nick’s kidnapping, but eventually it becomes clear that they are more and more suspicious of Nick’s activities, even thinking that he may have faked the whole thing. And that’s where I’ll leave the plot summary, not wanting to spoil the whole thing.

It’s very clear that Christopher Buckley knows his way around the corridors of power, as he describes the various D.C. types that inhabit his novel. Buckley pokes fun at both sides of the smoking debate, the media, Hollywood movie moguls, and stupidity and hypocrisy in general. Throughout the book, Buckley fires off great lines like, “The achievement of car phones is that your morning can now be ruined even before you get to the office.” Just substitute “cell” for “car” in that sentence and it’s even more true today. If you’re in the mood for a very funny satire of lobbyists, and Washington D.C. culture, pick up “Thank You For Smoking.” The only way it can be hazardous to your health is if you laugh too much.