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Summary: Down with Capitalism and the Bill of Rights!
Review: This book heightened one of the 7 deadly sins in me: anger. The author espouses himself to the liberalism of the 1960's and 1970's. He talks of Capitalism as if it is a sin of gluttony and not the American way. Quote from the book: "I wish I lived in a country that forbid its citizens to own guns for any reason, whether it is hunting, self-defense or sport. I hate guns." I try to read both sides of every argument, but I found little in this well written book that would lead me to his side on almost any subject. Granted, the author does have a talent for writing, although, his facts are misleading and serve to perpetuate his ultra-left ideals.
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Summary: Thank God Dan Savage is Hiliarious
Review: I found this book to be incredibly entertaining, although I had hoped it would be a bit more hard-hitting. I breezed through it very quickly, because Dan Savage's writing style is so wonderfully funny and accessible - I've enjoyed reading his columns for years and years, and this book doesn't dissapoint in that arena. Skipping Towards Gomorrah is funny, and has the slight whiff of political punditry, Savage comes off in "Skipping..." sort of like a less-confrontational Michael Moore. Would that Dan Savage would get a little more in your face with his opinions, do some research and make some harder-hitting arguments. It's an enjoyable read, but I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a more influential book sleeping beneath the surface.
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Summary: Hands-down the best!
Review: As a palm-piloter whose logged so many solo hours I should be flying sorties over Iraq right now I'd just like to thank Fred Savage for a career spent taking the onus out of onanism. Not only does he always go out of his way to say that there's nothing shameful about spanking the monkey but he even shows that all other sexual activities, indeed all activities, are nothing else than, to paraphrase Clausawitz, masturbation pursued by other means, and that all so-called "sexual" relations are really, in the end, relations to our own fantasies and desires. Perhaps some day in the future, relationism and onaphobia will taken as seriously as classism, sexism, sizism, and speciesism!
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Summary: A very brief review
Review: If you liked Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men", you're also going to like this one. They both use paradox, extensive research, and very funny rhetoric to bring you information that stimulates your thinking. They also make great conversation starters.
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Summary: This book is awesome!!!
Review: I am SO into Savage's book. I wish I were a boy, just I could SHOW him how totally cool he is. In fact, all of us Rho Phi Rho girls are TOTALLY into it. It 's the only thing we read, this and D'Souza's "Letters to a Young Conservative." People think that's weird, but they go together like sugar and spice. Dan tells me all the pleasures that I , as an AMERICAN, am entitled to, and Dinesh tells me why I shouldn't feel bad because other people aren't getting them. I HAVE to take this English distro with this strange, gnarled freak-teacher, and he goes on and on about third-world poverty and colonialism, and my head is spinning and I start thinking why do I deserve a Beamer and why do I get to vacation in Bermuda each year. But then I read Dinesh, and its like a Brain-Jacuzzi: all these worries float away, and I just think: I deserve it because I am ME, and AMERICAN. (I AM ME AN - A M E R I CAN : that's SO palindromic) And then I read Dan, and it's like: since I'm ME, what will I do next. Savage and D'Souza should TOTALLY open up a brain-spa together; Dan would massage you with thoughts of Pleasure, and Dinesh would wash away the that nasty Liberal guilt. You'd come out the PERFECT AMERICAN. They could call it DANNY AND DINNY'S. And they'd SO make a cute couple.
Rating: 
Summary: The end of eros
Review: For Dan Savage, a human being is nothing more than a bundle of desires, and life is merely the act of appropriating these through their gratification, transforming desire into our "identity." Whether we gratify them with other people, or in the deepest solitude, matters little. Either way the good life is the life of fulfilled desire, and the good society that which allows people the maximum choice to realize pleasure in the way they see fit. And so we become consumers of ourselves; enjoying ourselves as the produce that we have crafted from the impulses that we discover within ourselves.
What an impoverished vision! What sad complacency! Denied is all hope that there could be anything more than mere whims and their momentary satisfaction: that our desires, instead of "skipping to Gemorrah," might overleap themselves, and strive towards truth, beauty, goodness, or towards the contemplation of nature in its ephemerality and contingency. Yet if Savage's book excludes the very possibility that there is anything beyond mere desire, if it dismisses all the human possibilities that cannot be reduced to mere choice, his greatest disservice is to desire itself, and, above all, eros. Laid bare in its nakedness, it loses all its charm - it is no longer even sordid, but merely bland. Mere pleasure is a trifle. Is it this we seek when we fall in love, or the sumptuous mysteries with which lovers have shrouded their lusts? What is all the cooing and orgasmic moaning of barely-pubescent pop singers measured against the first bars of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, or Cherubino's arias in The Marriage of Figaro?
Only someone who remains a Christian moralist at heart, and has never felt the warming rays of Pagan Greece, could lump lust and pride together with gluttony and sloth. Rousseau put it best when he said: "I know only one sense whose affections have no admixture of anything moral in them. It is taste. So gluttony is always the dominant vice only of people who feel nothing." The greatest tragedies have been written of lust and pride; sloth and gluttony are the subjects only of farce. I doubt that Mozart, for all his genius, could have written an opera about a man who was not a seducer, but a pig.
I have no fondness for religious fanatics and philistine moralizers, yet I would choose Falwell or Bennet over Savage, if the choice had to be made. The former may rail against eros, but they do not despoil it with a too cheap embrace.
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Summary: anti-o'reilly
Review: this book is great for me it is so anti-conservative which will be totally rebiollous book from my fathers slobber books (o'rielly bork the like....)
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Summary: A Damn Good Book
Review: I'm going to keep this short and to the point, sparing extensive commentary. This is a great book. You don't need to be a "lefty" like myself to enjoy it, though it helps. What you do need, however, is an open mind. What I already knew but what many people will take from this book is that "sinning" does not make someone a bad or irresponsible person. Nor does it mean they're worthy of negative judgement from those who disagree with thier actions. So, if you're a lefty like me, read it knowing there are lot sof people like you who agrees with what is said in this book. If you're a "righty", do us all a favor. Open your mind, and read the whole book. To summarize: this book rocks, the social commentary is great, and it's something that everyone ages 15 and older (and some younger) should be reading and talking about.
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Summary: Political Garbage
Review: I cant believe I bought this book. I thought it would be interesting, and maybe funny, but it was Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity upside down. Social commentary from jackasses on the far right OR far left is boring and predictable. A book about the 7 deadly sins, telling stories and giving insight, without political commentary would be interesting. Dont waste your money on this book. It obviously written with a specific adgenda and without any orginal thought.
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Summary: Refocusing Our Sights On the Bill of RIghts
Review: In Skipping `Toward Gomorrah, nationally syndicated sex advice columnist, Dan Savage brings us an intelligent and reasoned voice of counterbalance to the many current (and extremely conservative) voices that cry out for Americans to "change their wicked ways and return to 'right living.'" In Skipping, Savage takes the creative route of investigating the Seven Deadly Sins as a lens through which to examine the U.S. Bill of Rights. His "sinning" is far from the real thing in my estimation and his experiences provide for some of the most entertaining illustrations of his points. Savage does an outstanding job of serving as a voice of counterbalance to the doomsayers among a rather large current crop of "conservatives" who tell us that society is going to "hell in a handbasket", and who set out to limit the rights of others and to define acceptable behavior for all "good" people. While anyone can invite others to a point of view, these neo-conservatives walk all over the Bill of Rights and insist that "good and right living" is defined on their terms and within their definitions of right and good and acceptable, and should be mandatory for all Americans. Those extremes I can live without! While often hysterically funny in the reading, the content of Skippingh Toward Gomorrah is, at its very heart, a soberingly serious discussion of the intentions of our founding fathers of our country. Savage brings a refreshingly honest voice to countering fundamentalists who -- n the name of morality, decency and all that is supposedly American, feel free to trample all over the Bill of Rights.
Savage accurately argues the dangers of any kind of extremism. At its worst, it is a cancer fermenting within individuals and groups that seems to allow them to presume the right to act in reckless ways in the effort to "control others" beliefs and behavior for the "good of all American people". The most frightening realization that Savage very plainly articulates is the fact that Americans too easily allow extreme positions to go unchallenged. In a democratic nation where we have voice and vote, we are far too often docile, polite or silent (or absent from the polls) in facing down messages that challenge the foundations of our democracy. We fail to challenge those who tell us how to live, or to defend the foundational principles of our Constitution. From Jimmy Swaggert to Dr. Laura Slessinger to William Bennett, to Patrick Buchanan, to Robert Bork, we are inundated with non-negotiable voices for "right moral living". Savage, quite accurately, lets us know that when any individual, or group, tells us that theirs is the "only correct view," they become dangerous. Skipping Toward Gomorrah is a book to be taken seriously. Dan Savage provides us with a thought provoking and insightful books that ask us to question how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by those who want to run our lives. He urges our greater personal decision-making and participation in the dialogue of the nation. He smartly cautions us on the importance of being unselective on the voices we are willing to listen to in contemporary politics, religion and in the media. Highly recommended. Savage is an excellent contemporary voice of reason! Daniel J. Maloney, Saint Paul, MN, USA
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