I've just read this book for the second time, which might sound like a good thing but 'm not really sure it is. You see, I was at a second hand book sale and saw How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World and thought, "That Wheen chap is supposed to be quite clever; and I enjoyed (while not necessarily agreeing with vital bits of) his biography of Karl Marx a few years ago. So let's add this one to the stack." So I did, and I read it, and it was only after thirty or so pages that I realised with an uneasy sensation of unease that I had read the damn thing before. But completely blanked the experience from my memory. Which is not good, and something I never do. Usually.
What's even odder is that HMJCTW is quite a memorable book - even if you might struggle to remember the detail, the fact that you've spent several days in Wheen's bracing presence should be something that stick. The tone or texture of the book is good - affecting the scornful rage at crap of Robert Hughes's Culture of Complaint and the hard headed progressive stance of Tom Franks's One Market Under God (which Wheen acknowledges a couple of times, in close enough juxtaposition and in similar enough terms to suggest proof reading wasn't really a priority or inappropriate starry eyed fanboyishness on Wheen's part). It's good, though not brilliant, and better when Wheen is flaying dragons closer to home, such as faux-lefties like Blair or Mandelson, or assailing the reliable hydra of Margaret Thatcher, than when delving into the Hellish netherworld of Post-Structuralist lunacies. That, of course, may be more to do with my personal prejudices and preferences.
Al Gore - another pseudo-leftie who is always given an easy ride because he made a film once about something or other and was robbed of his rightful inheritance, rather like Esau duped by Jacob - receives a roasting, his mealy mouthed defence of the tobacco industry cruelly but appropriately juxtaposed with his elegy for his dead sister, killed by lung cancer after smoking since she was a teen.
It seems to flag a little bit in the final chapter, where you can almost sense Wheen deliberately aiming a few blows at leftwing commentators, with a slightly self conscious air to ward off claims of bias - but it feels a bit half hearted. If you are going to do a take down of Noam Chomsky - and there is a man in need of a thorough taking down - then do it properly, not over a couple of pages. Chomsky's attempts to dismiss eyewitness testimony about the massacres in Cambodia is mentioned, for example - but the obvious link back to the Post-Structuralist attempts to deny reality, and the similarities between Chomsky's tactics and those of Holocaust Deniers is not made. Perhaps Wheen felt anyone who had ploughed through 300 pages of his book would have been sufficiently improved to make the connection without his prompting; and perhaps my chiding is the proof he was right. But I still feel that the final chapter needed to more ferocious than it was.
As with most books of this type, it is easy to read and easy to forget - most of the rage is forgotten after you put it down, and you slide back into a catatonic state of vague satisfaction. Most of the arguments, examples and anger have already faded from my mind - but hopeful, this time I'll at least remember that I have read it.
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