Unarmed but Dangerous: A Withering Attack on All Things Phony, Foolish, and Fundamentally Wrong With America Today
Synopsis

Essays by Hal Crowther
Forward by Annie Dillard

Incisive cultural commentary by one of the nation’s finest editorial columnists

Hal Crowther is mad as hell, but he stopped taking it and started dishing it out some years back. Appearing in The Independent in Durham, N.C., and syndicated in two dozen other weekly newspapers, Crowther’s commentary derides and debunks, attacks and antagonizes, calls names and kicks butt, and, most important, it tells the truth.

Among Crowther’s favorite targets are callous polluters, craven politicians, addlepated celebrities, image-mongers of every stripe – in short, everyone who has sold decency and integrity down the river in the name of the almighty dollar.

• In a piece called “Twisted Sisters,” Crowther calls Nancy Reagan and sleazy biographer Kitty Kelley “refugees from the same celebrity cesspool.”
• In “Rush to Ignorance,” Crowther observes that “whatever he intends, Rush Limbaugh provides phone sex for bigots and a nurturing environment for the most destructive strains of ignorance on the American fringe.”
• In response to Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s pious assertion that college sports is “an extension of what we do in the classroom,” Crowther writes, “What is he talking about, this imperious little guy who teaches a dozen itinerant gland cases how to set picks?”

In the tradition of Molly Ivans, Crowther’s essay amuse, engage, and provoke. But more than any of his peers, Crowther renews our sense of wonder at the power of the English language.