Gook: John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters

By Irwin A. Tang

Tang examines prejudices that he asserts John McCain has, and explains why itmatters. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0967943345
• ISBN13: 9780967943343
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Paul Revere Books
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

This is a very important book

I purchased this book after doing a google search on "John McCain" and "racism." Tang not only documents McCain's defense of the term "gook" to describe the Vietnamese, but how McCain's racism informs his world view. And this view translates to: it's okay to kill hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians (who are often unfortunate collateral), in just wars, as long as the people are Asian, black, brown, swarthy, or tanned. McCain's backing of known white supremacists and the Council of Conservative Citizens, a KKK-lookalike, is apparently nothing McCain has ever been ashamed of. His literal promise to start "more wars" in his presidency frankly makes him sound unstable and an enormous liability to the Republican party. When Chris Matthews asked John McCain about congressional support of a strategic attack on weaponry in Iran, McCain answered that he would "at minimum consult with the leaders of Congress." Given that the Constitution requires congressional support for a declaration of war, Tang wonders to which congressional "leaders" McCain refers. Committee chairs? Tang says: "It should be obvious that John McCain is more likely than the vast majority of elected officials in the Western world to use all-out war as a tool of negotiation." The mainstream media continue to act as stenographers, jotting down every falsehood McCain and Palin can cook up about Barack Obama's loose associations with unsavory types, while leaving the real reporting in this country to sites like salon.com, political blogs, and books like this one. The amazing thing about this book is that Tang simply reports on what is in the public record. He takes stenography one step further and practices journalism.

A Critical Look at McCain's Character

Less of a personal attack on McCain than a call to awareness, Gook deftly examines the relationship between racism and bellicosity. The author not only documents McCain's blatant expressions of racism, he also explores the historical development of the term "gook" and its direct link to brutal acts of war. I was especially horrified to learn about the atrocities commiteed by the US during the Spanish-American War, atrocities that the author contends were made more palatable by seeing Filipinos as "gooks" rather than humans. McCain's same mindset seems to be heading into more wars against other "gooks", no matter what their ethnicity migh be. Highly accessible to the uninitiated, and not without some humor, Gook's well substantiated claims about McCain and his visions for this country are necessary reading for anyone who hopes for a better country.