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Me the People
One Man's Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America
by Kevin Bleyer
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Until now.
Perfection is at hand. A new, improved Constitution is here. And you are holding it.
But first, some historical context: In the eighteenth century, a lawyer named James Madison gathered his friends in Philadelphia and, over four long months, wrote four short pages: the Constitution of the United States of America. Not bad.
In the nineteenth century, a president named Abraham Lincoln freed an entire people from the flaws in that Constitution by signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Pretty impressive.
And in the twentieth century, a doctor at the Bethesda Naval Hospital delivered a baby—but not just any baby. Because in the twenty-first century, that baby would become a man, that man would become a patriot, and that patriot would rescue a country . . . by single-handedly rewriting that Constitution.
Why? We think of our Constitution as the painstakingly designed blueprint drawn up by, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, an “assembly of demigods” who laid the foundation for the sturdiest republic ever created. The truth is, it was no blueprint at all but an Etch A Sketch, a haphazard series of blunders, shaken clean and redrawn countless times during a summer of petty debates, drunken ramblings, and desperate compromise—as much the product of an “assembly of demigods” as a confederacy of dunces.
No wonder George Washington wished it “had been made more perfect.” No wonder Benjamin Franklin stomached it only “with all its faults.” The Constitution they wrote is a hot mess. For starters, it doesn’t mention slavery, or democracy, or even Facebook; it plays favorites among the states; it has typos, smudges, and misspellings; and its Preamble, its most famous passage, was written by a man with a peg leg. Which, if you think about it, gives our Constitution hardly a leg to stand on.
[Pause for laughter.]
Now stop laughing. Because you hold in your hands no mere book, but the most important document of our time. Its creator, Daily Show writer Kevin Bleyer, paid every price, bore every burden, and saved every receipt in his quest to assure the salvation of our nation’s founding charter. He flew to Greece, the birthplace of democracy. He bused to Philly, the home of independence. He went toe-to-toe (face-to-face) with Scalia. He added nightly confabs with James Madison to his daily consultations with Jon Stewart. He tracked down not one but two John Hancocks—to make his version twice as official. He even read the Constitution of the United States.
So prepare yourselves, fellow patriots, for the most significant literary event of the twenty-first, twentieth, nineteenth, and latter part of the eighteenth centuries. Me the People won’t just form a More Perfect Union. It will save America.
Praise for Me the People
“I would rather read a constitution written by Kevin Bleyer than by the sharpest minds in the country.”—Jon Stewart
“Bleyer takes a red pencil to democracy’s most hallowed laundry list. . . . Uproarious and fascinating.”—Reader’s Digest
“I knew James Madison. James Madison was a friend of mine. Mr. Bleyer, you are no James Madison. But you sure are a heck of a lot more...
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 29, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780679604129
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780679604129
- File size: 7120 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from July 30, 2012
An Emmy Award–winning writer for The Daily Show, Kevin Bleyer does the unthinkable and rewrites the United States Constitution in his sharp and intensely witty latest effort that shows listeners just how out of date the American system of government is and what can be done to get with the times. Turning in a skillful and hilarious performance, Bleyer never fails to antagonize both left and right as he cuts into modern government and its officials. Bleyer’s tone is sharp and cynical, but to his credit, he never sounds angry or confrontational. His approach is from a comedic perspective, but—luckily for listeners—he also has an important message: America is out of touch with itself. An endlessly enjoyable listening experience. A Random House hardcover. -
April 1, 2012
An often funny, politically provocative illumination of the Constitution, a document that all politicians and most Americans revere without really understanding its contents or origins. Even as revised by the Emmy-winning Bleyer, there is no provision in the Constitution mandating that anyone who has ever been associated with The Daily Show be given a book deal. If there were, this would still be one of the better ones to emerge from that publishing tribe. Bleyer makes readers think as well as laugh, and he targets those with the attention span for book-length arguments rather than TV bits. As he writes of the Constitution, "For two centuries, we have been expected to abide by it, live by it, swear by it--some of us, officially--yet we have no idea what it says." Bleyer demonstrates that the Constitution is a document that generated heated controversy during its drafting, in its attempts to strike compromises on such crucial issues as the relative powers of federal and state governments, the checks and balances that the three branches would exert on each other and the danger that a chief executive might come to resemble the king that the colonies had fought for against their freedom. "From page one, the Constitution is, by its own admission, a compromise," writes Bleyer of the document accorded an almost biblical level of secular authority. "I'm not suggesting there's something inherently wrong in compromise. I'm saying it. I'm screaming it to the rooftops. We're America, dang it." Yet even its framers considered the Constitution sufficiently flawed that they immediately amended it with the Bill of Rights, which Bleyer terms "a signing bonus. A bribe. The constitutional equivalent of a set of steak knives to sweeten the deal on a new bank account." Among the radical suggestions in Bleyer's revision is to make every citizen a member of Congress, since, as it stands, "Con-gress is the opposite of pro-gress." Funny stuff with both a point and a perspective.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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