The Republican Playbook

The Republican Playbook
Andy Borowitz
Hyperion Books
ISBN: 1-4013-0290-4
Fiction, Political Satire
Reviewed by Lee Gooden

The Republican Playbook: Stolen from the Whitehouse by Andy Borowitz is a spoof and satire not only on Republicans, but on the power hungry despots that call themselves Republicans. The idea is that since the Nixon Administration there has been a playbook that the elite Republicans use to stay in power. This particular book is supposedly a direct copy of President George W Bush’s private edition. Inside the playbook there is a title page formatted like the inside of a school text book. The first three lines read: “THE REPUBLICAN PLAYBOOK”, on the next line it reads “COPY 4478”. Below this, in block letters, reads, “PROPERTY OF”. The next line is a mock large blue ink flourished cursive signature of President George W Bush. Beneath the signature is an oath that reads, “Place your right hand over this book and repeat the following. By reading this book I promise to swear in a court of law that I have never read this book, I have never seen this book, and this book does not exist, so help me GOP.” At the bottom of the page in the left and right hand margins in the same blue ink as the signature in big block letters framing a Jolly Roger Pirate flag are the words that children have been attaching to club houses, bedrooms and diaries for decades, TOP SECRET and KEEP OUT. Throughout the book are blue ink doodles and comments that were supposed to have been inserted by the President.
The Republican’s Playbook is hilarious. For example in a section entitled, Why is the Republican Playbook So Small, it reads, “The book was designed to be portable, so that a Republican political candidate could carry it with him at all times in an inconspicuous manner. Also, it was important that it be tiny enough to elude detection in a full body-cavity search if the owner of the book winds up in prison.”
The above statement is funny enough on its own, but within the text the word inconspicuous is circled in blue ink and an arrow leads to another caption with the single word: “MEANS?” underlined three times. Again, this is supposed to be President Bush’s annotation. In another section entitled, The Democratic Party and Why It Is Bad there is an annotation that reads, “Ask NSA-how much $ to wiretap every Democrat in country.”
Some people maybe put-off by the Republican Playbook, considering it distasteful and disrespectful. Borowitz realizes this, so he makes fun of Democrats as well. In a section entitled Dirty Tricks: Fun with Wikipedia, it reads, “John Reid Edwards (born June 10 1953) is an American attorney and politician form the U.S. state of North Carolina. A Democrat, Edwards was indicted in 2006 for murdering legendary rapper Tupak Shakur.” Beneath, a mock Bush annotation reads, “Good use of the internets.”
It has been claimed that the best way to rate a society’s humanitarianism is by examining its penal system and schools. This is a logical and academic approach, but to delve into the crux of a civilization, one has to explore its ability to laugh at itself. Whether politics, religion and even the most taboo of subjects a truly humane society must find humor in its condition. The Republican Playbook is one of many pressure release valves for conflict stimulating growth that allow our society to continue to evolve. We must never take ourselves too seriously and we must never forget to laugh.