You Don't Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values by Win McCormack, Steve Brodner

Synopsis

Shocking, illuminating, profoundly disturbing…You Don't Know Me details over one hundred cases of sexual misconduct by Republican officials, office holders, and ideological supporters.

In addition to augmenting the public's knowledge of infamous scandals of recent times, the book unearths a multitude of other instances of Republican sexual waywardness, most criminal in nature. Author Win McCormack's introduction explores parallels between Republican abuses of power in the sexual and political realms and traces their possible common intellectual origins.

Publishers Weekly

Editor-in-chief of Tin House magazine, McCormack catalogues over 100 cases of sexual misconduct and criminality committed by Republican officials and supporters in an entertaining effort to expose the hypocrisy of America's self-professed "family values party." Readers hungry for a helping of schadenfreude will relish the A-Z illustrated collection of misdeeds featuring prominent GOP personalities involved in bestiality, pedophilia, incest, autoerotic asphyxiation and lengthier musings on the exploits of Republican heavyweights including Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly and George W. Bush. Along the way, the author raises unintended questions; his crime blotter seems to speak less about GOP failings and more about the moral decline of American society at large. Indeed, the book's sample is so large that the evidence suggests something awry in the polis, not just the party. And while reading about Rev. Ted Haggard's methamphetamine-fueled romp with a male prostitute is hardly dull reading, the book's most compelling section is its introduction, where McCormack invokes Adorno and social science research to link repressed sexuality to authoritarianism in a fascinating argument that leaves the reader eager for additional analysis that sadly never materializes. (Aug.)

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Biography

Win McCormack is publisher and editor-in-chief of Tin House magazine. He has been in the magazine and book publishing business since 1976. He published Oregon Magazine from 1976 to 1988, and has also been involved in publishing Oregon Business, Oregon Home, Travel Oregon, Military History Quarterly, and Art and Auction magazines, and was involved in the start-up of Mother Jones. He is editor of the books Profiles of Oregon, Great Moments in Oregon History, and The Rajneesh Chronicles, and won a William Allen White award for his investigative coverage of the Rajneesh cult from 1982-1986. He writes on politics and wrote the article "Deconstructing the Election: Foucault, Derrida and GOP strategy," about the presidential election debacle in Florida in 2000, for the Nation. He holds a BA in Government from Harvard College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon.