Ed Asner (1929–2021)

I skimmed through most of the book. Asner found an excellent vehicle and topic to mock Republicans and people on the Right including Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh etc. A great deal of sarcastic humor and jibes in the book not unlike that used by Asner's TV character Lou Grant decades ago.

I borrowed this book from the library. If one is interested in knowing more about the Constitution, the people who wrote it and the desired goals, there are more scholarly books that have been published.… (mehr)

I needed this book. I needed to hear Lou Grant get on a rant about the current state of politics. The Eds, Asner and Weinberger, came through for me. They brought in both Lou Grants, the funny one from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the serious one from “Lou Grant”. Since 2007 I have primarily read academic histories and primary documents like Payne’s “Common Sense”. In fact the two books I read immediately before “The grouchy historian : an old-time lefty defends our Constitution against right-wing hypocrites and nutjobs” were “Civic ideals : conflicting visions of citizenship in U.S. history” by Rogers M. Smith and Peter H. Iron’s “A people's history of the Supreme Court : the men and women whose cases and decisions have shaped our Constitution”, not exactly light bedtime reading. I was not sure what to expect from an actor and a Hollywood script writer. Would “The Grouchy Historian” be as riddled with errors as any of the right wing screeds produced to suck money from Fox followers?

Not at all. In the introduction Asner discusses the preparations, the research, he did to write this book. Even without reading “The Federalist Papers” from cover to cover, after all as he pointed out, he is 86 years old, he and Weinberger have written a well reasoned and informed rebuttal to the nonsense spewing from the GOP. I was concerned about chapter seven, ‘The Writing of the Constitution: Notes from the Constitutional Convention as recorded by Billey, Slave to James Madison, May 6 to September 17, 1787’. Why fictionalize a journal entry, even one that COULD have been written? Why not write about the Convention? It took me some time to see what they were doing, when I did I literally took a break from reading to tell my wife how brilliant the book was.

Read this book and over the holidays you will be rewarded by being able to explain to THAT relative that the Constitution was written precisely to raise taxes and create a stronger central government. The Articles of Confederation, the failed original set of laws of the United States failed exactly because it was to weak and the federal government begging the states for funding. You will learn what the hell a “Strict Constructionist is” and how entertaining reading Supreme Court decisions can be. (They can also be very disheartening)

Remember, the Constitution is only as good as the people sworn to protect it. These days that line brings tears to my eyes.… (mehr)