I Am America

Critics

• I Am America (And So Can You!) By Stephen Colbert

  As most Americans know by now, there are two Stephen Colberts. One is a quick-witted, classically trained 43-year-old actor, husband and father of three from Charleston, South Carolina, who drifted into comedy at Chicago's famed Second City improv tr ... (read full critics)

  bookpage published on Wed, 15 Sep 2010

• I Am America (and So Can You!)

  On the title page of the galleys of this ironically strident, annoying, repetitive, dishonest, priggish, self-congratulatory, exploitational, celebrity-driven, offensive -- and often extremely funny -- book, it says, in the credits, "Additional mater ... (read full critics)

  barnesandnoble published on Wed, 1 Sep 2010

4 Reviews

• 2 people find this helpful

  

  There's about 10 really funny things in the book and the rest is just sort of amusingish. It's not really memorable though.

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  Deanna Kyre said on Mar 22, 2008 | Add your feedback

• 

  Christopher J. Bacolas

  Hello, Chris Bacolas here to tell you that Stephen Colbert's 'I AM AMERiCA (AND SO CAN YOU!)' was quite entertaining. As a long time fan of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, I believe Stephen did a great job dictating such an epic literary delight.

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  Christopher J. Bacolas said on Mar 2, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  Very funny and "right-wing"

  Colbert, previously of The Daily Show, today resides over The Colbert Report, a near-daily TV extravaganza in which he plays an American right-wing TV pundit, thrashing everything liberal in his path. While the show deals with reality, its contents are rarely as such. For a lot of outsiders - i.e. n ... (continue)

  Colbert, previously of The Daily Show, today resides over The Colbert Report, a near-daily TV extravaganza in which he plays an American right-wing TV pundit, thrashing everything liberal in his path. While the show deals with reality, its contents are rarely as such. For a lot of outsiders - i.e. non-Americans* - the contents of his show often seem exotic, making the humor quite evident. To a lot of Americans, I know this is not the case. As the syndicated right-wing rhetoric is often reminiscent of Hitler's charms, Colbert evolves his humor on that and hence, his show is ripe with comments like:

  "Once upon a time, racism was a terrible problem in this country."

  "If there's a bigger contributor to left-wing elitist brainwashing than colleges and universities, I'd like to see it. There's an old saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Which means a _lot_ of knowledge must be a _really_ dangerous thing. And it is. Look no further than the example of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber. He skipped sixth grade, got a Bachelor's from Harvard followed by a Master's and a Ph.D., and then embarked on a distinguished academic career of blowing people up. Most Ph.D. biographies have similar endings."

  So, the book is much of the same, also with annotated margin comments! Chapter names vary from The Family, Religion, Sex & Dating, Homosexuals to Class War, The Media, Immigrants and Science, which are just as confrontational, prejudiced, narcissistic and funny as you'd expect.

  Reading this book is quite like watching his show. Or watching Bill Hicks do his routine about how the American government fabricated the story on Oswald killing JFK. It's reality gift-wrapped, although Hicks wasn't right-winged, erhm.

  All in all, a very funny read that aggravated me on more than one occasion, enlightened me on several and made me think of another Colbert quote:

  "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

  * This isn't applicable to countries where one person owns all media. Yes, you, Italy, and...Rupert Murdoch!

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  Niklas Pivic said on May 12, 2009 | Add your feedback

• 

  Not as ridiculously hilarious as I expected.

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  baftaboo said on May 19, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
  (35)
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• English Books
• Hardcover 240 Pages
• ISBN-10: 1905264321
• ISBN-13: 9781905264322
• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Pub date: Apr 03, 2008
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Audio CD and Others

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