American Rhapsody by Joe Eszterhas Publisher: Picador. Some of you may know Joe Eszterhas as the winner of the Emanuel Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for work dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust in Hungary. Most however will know him as the screenwriter of the wonderfully post-feminist analysis of gender relationships known as Showgirls. And many of you will by now be asking what the hell could this schmuck tell me about America, its politics and the relationship between Larry Flynt, Dubya and Bubba Clinton’s dick. Quite a lot actually. Eszterhas begins his plunge into the belly-button gunk of american politics by offering up a suggestion of why Clinton’s election was so important to the baby boomers, those who had grown up with Elvis, fucked to the Beatles, tripped to the Dead and then given it all up and become ultra-moralistic once kids started popping from their wombs. Clinton was one of them, Eszterhas alleges, a dope-smoking, draft-dodging, hump-a-minute hellraiser with a wife who, whilst cold to Clinton in bed and in life, was on the team that tried to impeach Nixon. Nixon here is called the Night Creature, a fuming insomniac staying up all night raving to his own Monica, his personal assistant. For Eszterhas and ergo his generation, Nixon represents the worse of the worst, the evil precursor that allowed years of Reganism, that ruined their idealism, that bred bastards like Buchanan, Robinson, Limbaugh et al. Clinton was supposed to save them from the Republican right, he was supposed to change the ways things wor ked. Instead he got caught. He wasn’t caught with his pants down and cigar up. He was caught lying about it. Time after time. “I did not have sex with that woman.” was to Clinton what “I am not a criminal.” was to Nixon. Eszterhas mixes his factual narrative with character riffs. His on-the-mark takes of Hillary, Senator McCain and Clinton’s penis Willard (“because it’s longer than willie) combine with his varied explorations of Linda Tripp’s involvement in every single scandal, of Al Gore’s dreams of popularity and Larry Flynt putting his money where the President’s dick was, the thought of public scandal after Flynt’s million dollar reward the only thing that stopped the Republicans impeaching Boss Hog. Hunter S pops his head up as well, friends, almost brothers with Clinton's campaign manager James Carvill who is married to Bush Sr’s campaign manager, but rumoured to be having affairs.... If it all sounds like a Hollywood escapade, it’s because American life in the 90s was like a movie, with a script written by Eszterhas. From Hillary channelling Eleanor R’s spirit on the roof of the White House to Dan Quayle telling kids how to misspell common vegetables, everything was hoisted image upon image by CNN, Fox and NBC. Life became a nightly update, election campaigns a process of spin, spin and respin, and in the end, it’s the media men like Eszterhas who can best comment. After all, as Eszterhas notes, wasn’t Nicole Simpson’s murder with the missing murder weapon remarkably similar to the Eszterhas film, where a celebrity figure gets away with murdering his wife, the weapon never found, the murders even occurring on the same date - June 12? In amongst all the mess, we have fairly-well argued accusations of Clinton as a rapist, of George W involved in scorch-earth campaigns against McCain in the South, and of most of the Republican and Democrat senate engaged in well-known liaisons with lesser known “bit-partners.” American Rhapsody, in the end, works in two ways. It’s an elegy to the youthful idealism that put Clinton into the White House, the baby boomer mentality that wrecked havoc with its ‘We will Change It’ without changing ourselves attitude. It’s also a reflection on how political reality has become more Hollywood feature than representative democracy. Eszterhas’ book is scary, it’s hilarious, it’s shocking and, above all, essential reading.