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Mitt Romney and my novel, Getting It

By Daniel Shaviro

My unpublished comic novel, Getting It, features a convoluted set of battles between the "hero," a character who is a complete phony and hypocrite, and his rival, who is even worse by reason of being a true believer in the values of their workplace, and no phony or hypocrite at all.

One "lesson" of the story in my mind, not that it tries to teach lessons any more than my models Wodehouse and Waugh did, is that there are worse things out there than mere hypocrisy - even total, arrant hypocrisy mixed with grandiose dishonesty and over-wrought self-involvement. I am trying to remind myself of this in order to feel a bit less angry at the scoundrel Mitt Romney.

Beyond trying to read atheists and agnostics out of membership in U.S. society, he is also trying to prompt an angry counter-attack by them so he can pose as the champion of the Bible-thumping sectarians. Of course, he doesn't give a damn about any of this. I suppose he'd be even more dangerous if he actually believed any of this stuff. But then again, how far is he willing to go in this direction for political convenience? Doberman, the scoundrel hero of my novel, is just trying to make partner - he will always be scrabbling and desperate, for all his bravado. Romney aims for the ability to do a lot more harm, and evidently is entirely willing to do it. Maybe my novel's "lesson" shouldn't be over-generalized.

Full post as published by Start Making Sense on December 07, 2007 (boomark / email).