SelwynDuke.com

Review of "Trickle Up Poverty"

By Selwyn Duke

As I was listening to Michael Savage’s radio show no more than a year ago, I heard something that might have caused his faithful listeners to scurry for the anti-depressants. (That is, if the host weren’t so steadfast in counseling against their use.) Dejected over his unfair inclusion on a list of individuals banned from travel to Britain, Savage expressed an intention to leave the airwaves in the not-too-distant future. Since then, however, certain events have changed his mind. Not the least of these, I believe, is his desire to fight the good fight against the statist advance under the Obama administration. And the result of this patriotic motivation is his latest book Trickle Up Poverty (TUP).

While TUP is Dr. Savage’s latest book, it is no more the first than radio is his first career. The many-hatted host — who holds a doctorate in epidemiology and nutritional science — actually spent a good part of his life as a botanical Indiana Jones, traveling the South Pacific in search of plants with medicinal qualities. Considered a pioneer in the field, he wrote 17 books on health and herbal medicine and, upon transitioning to nutrition for the mind, wrote numerous best-sellers on politics and social issues.

Read the rest here.

Saul Alinsky Meets Dr. Seuss: Obama Pens Children’s Book

By Selwyn Duke

When discussing a new study about liberals’ and conservatives’ favorite television shows recently, pundit Bill O’Reilly and his guests mentioned that liberals like works about “flawed people.” If this is so, they will certainly appreciate Barack Obama’s just published children’s book, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.

Much like Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” (which the author wrote for his 12-year-old son), Obama’s book was penned for his children Malia and Sasha — hence the subtitle A Letter to My Daughters. Unlike Kipling’s poem, however, I very much doubt his kids will be the better for reading it.

The book features 13 American “heroes” whose traits the president sees in his daughters. And it does include traditional figures such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein (I guess a bone had to be thrown to the dead-white-male set) and Neil Armstrong. Yet it also includes the troubled jazz great Billie Holiday; artist Georgia O’Keefe, who sometimes posed nude for photographs; and socialist Jane Addams, who, quite fittingly, was a community organizer.

Read the rest here.

Culture in the Rye

By Selwyn Duke

Many years ago, I was told a story by a woman I knew whose son had been diagnosed with “A.D.D.”  She said that she finally had to take from her boy a book a therapist had given him about how an A.D.D. child acts.  The problem?  Her son was reading it and then imitating the behavior of the child in it!

Then I remember when someone I know well told me about her 13-year-old’s reaction to being confronted about his misbehavior.  He said something to the effect of, “Well, mom, you know, I’m at that age.”  But how did he know he was at “that age”?