Spanking the Donkey
Review by Liz Lyon
For those familiar with Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo journalism and Timothy Crouses’s Boys on the Bus, Matt Taibbi’s Spanking the Donkey is nothing new—he’s just another politically sentient drug abuser mixed up in a presidential campaign. With Donkey, he pens a scathing critique of the U.S. political system and the media that writes for it.
That said, Taibbi does bring something to the equation that neither Thompson nor Crouse ever did—culture shock and a deep love for Mother Russia. After 10 years of living, working, and writing in Russia, Taibbi returns home to the U.S., on the brink of the Iraq War, just in time to cover the presidential election for Rolling Stone.
Taibbi writes in his introduction:
It is often easier to be generous about one’s adopted country than about one’s home. When one sees the grotesque abroad, it’s easy to see the humor in all those visible warts, to pass it all off as the amusing shortcomings not of Your Own Kind, but of mankind in general—a more abstract personage... What happened in Russia was not, ultimately, my problem, not so long as I could leave. Which is what I did, in the spring of 2002, when I decided to see if there was a way I could feel the same way about my own country... Here I was not an impartial observer, but a walking, breathing element of the whole complicated scenario.
Anyone who has spent time out of the country understands exactly what Taibbi is talking about. In another country, no matter how horrific or whacky or inhumane reality is, at least you’re not paying taxes for a front-row seat. You’re there, but you’re not a fully invested part of it.
But what happens when we come home? In an ideal world, while abroad, we have learned to view without judgment, to respect that which is different, and to accept even the most bizarre ways of living as normal or routine. However, once we come home, we forget all that. We are not in a new place whose customs we don’t understand—we are at home, and we belong here. We are here. Everything we witness, good or bad, is inextricably a part of us.
However, Taibbi did not write Spanking the Donkeyas a way to explore what it means to return to the U.S. after 10 years abroad. Though he wrote it shortly after he returned to the U.S., to call it anything but a laugh-out-loud political critique would be disingenuous. That said, it does have particular value for those among us who, after spending time abroad, come home and wonder: “What is going on here?”
Spanking the Donkey is a worthwhile read, not just because Taibbi is a gifted, hilarious, and often manic writer, as well as an observant social critic, but also because his book serves as a model for those of us who may well spend great portions of our lives away from our home country. When we do return, how will we see our home? Can we ever view it the way we viewed our adopted country? Can our experience abroad make our understanding of our own culture more meaningful and more mature?
Spanking the Donkey is an insightful read because it’s funny, it’s challenging, and because, just maybe, it will help us sort out what coming home really means.