Conservative talk radio personality Laura Ingraham’s “The Obama Diaries” is a disappointment for anyone expecting groundbreaking work in the fledgling subgenre of political RPF (real person fan fiction).
The nonfiction book is not a diary at all, but rather Ingraham’s critical analysis of the Obama administration interspersed with fabricated “diaries” from a number of administration figures, up to and including the president’s mother-in-law.
I’ll leave Ingraham’s arguments against the current administration’s actions for other reviewers to examine — see Steven Levingston’s recent review of this book in The Washington Post for a take with which I mostly concur — and focus on the “diaries” themselves and the conceit on which this book rests.
American politics, while serving as a never-ending source of material for nonfiction writers and historians, is a fertile ground for fiction writers, the most recent example being a recasting of the life of former first lady Laura Bush in Curtis Sittenfeld’s 2008 novel, “American Wife.” However, Ingraham has figured out how to make political RPF sell by melding it with the nonfiction genre of the conservative polemic. For that feat, she should be applauded.
Ingraham’s views regarding the current administration are on obvious display in the characterization of the public figures depicted in the “diaries” themselves. They skew hyperreal and comical, with political and personal missteps amplified by 24-hour news cycles being trotted out in short first-person narratives for the reader’s amusement.
Rahm Emanuel’s “diaries” are, unsurprisingly, littered with expletives, though Ingraham oddly limits profanity use to once or twice in a sentence and always inserts a pound sign or ampersand in just the right place so as to not actually use the profane word in question.
Joe Biden comes off as your typical fat cat, foul-mouthed, lecherous politician — though not as foul as Emanuel, of course. Michelle Obama’s mother, Marion Robinson, is portrayed as sneaking candy and snacks to her grandchildren in small defiance of the first lady’s healthy eating agenda.
Michelle herself is sarcastic and condescending, as if an entire persona was built around the right’s reactions, assumptions and extrapolations from her “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” remark during the 2008 presidential campaign.
And the “diaries” version of Barack Obama is just this guy, you know. Of course, “this guy” needs a motorcade to visit his daughters’ private school and maybe get in a round of golf. All you Vladimir Putin fans will be happy to note that Ingraham found him worthy of inclusion in this tome with his own faked “diaries” detailing his interactions with Russian and U.S. politicians.
A version of this article appeared in the Aug 31 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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