Sh*tshow!

March 19, 2018
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist LeDuff (Detroit: An American Autopsy) delivers a crackling critique of American culture using vignettes from his years traveling across the country and talking to everyday Americans for a Fox news segment called “The Americans.” Instead of covering fluff like pie-eating contests, LeDuff and his crew dug into stories about the Flint water crisis, the desperation of those who followed the siren song of the North Dakota oil fields only to find few jobs and low wages, and the rusting, corrupt husk of Detroit. LeDuff intersperses harrowing, white-knuckle moments, such as the time he forged a press pass to interview cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, who was at the time awaiting trial for his 2014 standoff with federal agents, with flashes of sweet irony, such as when LeDuff witnesses black staffers at a gas station deny a member of the Ku Klux Klan use of the restroom. LeDuff’s seething disgust for inequality, corruption, and discrimination is apparent throughout, and it’s made even more potent by LeDuff’s stylized reporting (“Down the road from the collapsing trailer-court cracker box was another brownfield, another dead factory, where dead-end children with blood-red teeth rummaged through filth”). This timely portrait of America is a superb example of contemporary gonzo journalism.

March 15, 2018
A notorious journalist attempts to unpack the complex political, social, and cultural issues that have come to dominate the American discourse.In the latest from LeDuff (Detroit: An American Autopsy, 2013, etc.), America is on the brink of a cataclysmic event; unfortunately, this is not a work of fiction. The author takes us from 2013 to 2017, from the moment he pitched a TV show idea to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of spending "Year One of Our Trump in [his] underpants." His show, The Americans, showcased "everyday people who were trying to get by as the country and their way of life disintegrated around them." The author traveled across the country to gather material for his show. He spent considerable time in Detroit, dissecting the implications of racial disparities; in Ferguson, understanding the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of black teenager Michael Brown; and on the Mexican border, trying to capture both the American and Mexican experiences of immigration. While LeDuff's insight is often sobering, his approach is sometimes self-serving and often acts like a disservice to the communities he attempts to capture on film. "A güero like myself flailing around in a ridiculous costume with a giant yellow banana had two purposes: It would get the attention of the smugglers, and it would make for good TV," he writes. The need for "good TV" comes up often, and it seems the author would do anything to reach that goal, even if it means embodying the stereotype of the white savior: "I gave the boy twenty dollars....I told him to remember his mother's sacrifice, and I welcomed him to America. Sometime in his life, I hope, he will think back on me....I gave him one of the press conference doughnuts. Chocolate cream filling." Readers may learn important lessons from the difficult realities of LeDuff's subjects but little thanks to him.A frustrating account of the current exasperating state of affairs. For a more penetrating portrait of similar issues, head back to Detroit.

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