Supreme Courtship

June 9, 2008
From the indefatigable Buckley comes a flabby satire about a television judge who ends up on the Supreme Court. Unpopular president Donald P. Vanderdamp nominates Pepper Cartwright after Sen. Dexter “Hang ’em High” Mitchell torpedoes his first two contenders. Once Pepper is confirmed and leaves her show, her producer (and soon-to-be ex-husband), Buddy Bixby, persuades Mitchell to leave the Senate and try his hand at acting as the star of the political drama POTUS
. Vanderdamp, meanwhile, mounts a re-election bid to protest Congress’s approval of an absurd term limits amendment. He faces off against Mitchell, who ditches his role as television president to run for real president, and before you can say “Whizzer White,” it is left up to newbie Pepper and the rest of the Supremes to decide the fate of the election. Unfortunately for the reader, Pepper’s story gets lost between the jokes and the overstuffed plot (including a romance with the Chief Justice, the investigation of a leak inside the Supreme Court and a nuclear threat from China), and the satire is oddly detached from the zeitgeist.

Starred review from November 24, 2008
It's a delicious prospect: what if a beleaguered president decided to nominate a TV judge to the Supreme Court? Buckley effectively ransacks the Washington political machine for his newest novel, disarmingly read by Anne Heche. No stranger to controversy herself, Heche takes a special glee in depicting media gone mad. For Pepper Cartwright, the “plain ole girl from Plano” who finds herself on the bench, Heche effectively channels Annie Potts. Yet Heche is equally effective delivering the rest of the overwhelmingly male characters, ranging from the Midwestern President Vandercamp to a patrician fixer and Pepper's flashy producer husband. Supreme satirical novelist Buckley gives the narrator plenty of clues, and Heche delivers the annoying laugh and calculating tones of justice wannabe Senator Mitchell with hilarious exactitude. Despite the preponderance of men in Supreme Courtship
, it is the brilliant casting of Heche—who keeps Pepper present at all times—that gives this audiobook an edge over the print edition. A Twelve hardcover (Reviews, June 9).

July 15, 2008
Buckley's latest satire (after "Boomsday" and "Thank You for Smoking") takes on the Supreme Court, reality television, and presidential elections. When two of an unpopular president's Supreme Court nominees are rejected for, among other things, writing an unfavorable review of the film version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in a grade school newspaper, the president retaliates by nominating a popular network television judge. Things get further complicated when she actually wins the nomination. Buckley is a master at setting up ridiculous situations featuring unsavory characters, and he does not disappoint here, presenting a senator who stars in his own TV series portraying a U.S. president (definitely not "West Wing" caliber) and a TV producer whose biggest reality success aside from his wife's courtroom show features people jumping to their deaths. Buckley's main character, however, TV judge Pepper Cartwright, never rises above cliché, and all her supporting characters get the best lines. Happily, Buckley features these supporting characters and their snappy dialog heavily. Recommended for public libraries.Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2008
Washington politics is the fountain of satire, and prolific, multitalented Buckley has been imbibing its elixir for years. Following Boomsday (2007), his hilarious take on the impending Social Security meltdown, Buckleytargets the fraught relationship between the president and U.S. Supreme Court while continuing his disparagement of the insidious blurring of reality and TV. The wretchedly unpopular and morose President Vanderdamp has to come up with yet another nominee for the Supreme Court because Dexter Mitchell, the botoxed, mannequin-haired chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and presidential wannabe, has viciously shot down two perfectly respectable candidates. Jaws drop when Vanderdamp picks Pepper Cartwright, the irresistible, sharp-tongued, whip-smart Texas judge on everyones favorite TV courtroom show. What will the uptight and polarized Supreme Court justices make of this sassy interloper? Will Kiss my Ass Pepper be the proverbial breath of fresh air or a tabloid disaster? Buckleys ingenious and mischievous tale of a Washington shakeup via an injection of good old American authenticity is funny and entertaining yet disconcertingly toothless. You would think that in a time of endless debacles and disasters whats called for is take-no-prisoners satire, a torch not a pacifier. Instead, Buckley delivers a clever, merry, escapist little parody. OK, sedatives are useful, but lets hope he has his claws out next time around.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)