Pun Salad

Kat Timpf's second book showed up on the shelves of Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, an impulsive grab for me. My take on her first book, You Can't Joke About That is here. As I said there, I became a Kat fan when she was writing for National Review (where she was bylined "Katherine Timpf") from 2014 to 2020. (Her author archive is here.) She moved on to Fox News, and became sort of famous, I think. She also does stand-up comedy.

Her overall thesis (see subtitle) is unexceptional: you should not judge people as evil, insane, ignorant, or stupid simply because they disagree with you on some political or personal matter. I assume it's OK to judge if they actually are evil, insane, ignorant, or stupid. But, geez, suck it up and move on; you're not perfect either.

The book is a mishmash of personal observations and political opinion. She is a self-described "small-l" libertarian, and when she is defending her small-p positions, she's often on-target and occasionally very funny. From her chapter on religion:

A lot of the stuff from the Bible is beautiful and certainly more insightful than the Marilyn Monroe quotes that wind up plastered all over Instagram. (I mean, I've said this before, but I'll say it again: As soon as I read "It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring!" all I hear is "I'm a reckless sloppy drunk and I might throw up in your car!")

Downsides: her on-screen/stage jobs have made her hone her verbal skills very sharply: she's into, see above, one-liner zings. That style doesn't often translate well to the printed page. (Getting the audiobook might work better.) She says "like" a lot. Example, from her climate-change discussion:

Here's the thing, though: If your go back to the Two Sides of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, there are many reasons to see both sides as right. For example, it would be better, in a perfect, simple world, to just, like, stop emitting greenhouse gases.

Safe to say that Kat will not be competing with George F. Will anytime soon. (And, by the way, an Earth without greenhouse gases would be a very cold Earth, without photosynthesis. And, therefore, also probably without many people.)

Kat's rocky personal life, filled with conflict with family, lovers, friends, nicotine, and ex-fans (see the title) is … sorry, not that interesting.