Spanking the donkey - Matt Taibbi

Spanking the Donkey is a raucous ride along the campaign trail for the Democratic nomination and the presidency. New York Press columnist Matt Taibbi follows the Democratic candidates; sometimes he attends key events in costume, other times he infiltrates the campaign staff and covers the story from the inside. Throughout, he offers refreshingly sharp portraits of both the candidates and the journalists he meets along the way. Most Americans consider the presidential election process to be a time of national discussion, the one ritual event that forces Americans to look themselves in the mirror and evaluate what they see. "A healthy expression of the Democratic process" is how it is often described, generally by reporters on the campaign trail who naturally see themselves as the great midwives of this healthy national catharsis.;Spanking the Donkey is a campaign-trail diary that operates from the opposite viewpoint. In following the race for the Democratic nomination in 2004, Matt Taibbi travels in and out of two different worlds - the contrived world of the election process, and the real United States, where life is not the antiseptic exercise in faint patriotic optimism the media describes it as being. By living in halfway houses and slums as he covers the day-to-day electoral grind, and by following the "man on the street" back to his actual house, Taibbi paints a Dorian Grey-esque portrait of two Americas: the one that poses as the national self-image, and the never seen warts-and-all reality.