75-Year-Old Man Publishes Fan Fiction; BTW, That Man Is Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and consummate presidential-vote splitter, has written another book. The 700-plus page manuscript, entitled Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a work of fiction that features real-life people, such as Barry Diller and Yoko Ono, saving America by following Nader's ideals. Journalists are calling the book a novel. Nader has said that he is uncomfortable with that term and instead calls the book a "fictional vision that could become a new reality" (I'm sure Barnes & Noble will be adding a "Fictional Visions → New Realities" section soon). But as any 13-year-old with sweet lightsaber moves or housewife yearning to be nibbled by Robert Pattison can tell you, Nader's book is something much greater than a novel or even a "vision" - it's fan fiction.
Yup, fan fiction - the stuff that fans write, taking existing characters they love and crafting new stories for them that express the writers' deepest desires. Fan fiction is what has populated the internet with Kirk and Spock sex scenes, led countless people of all ages to write themselves into the Harry Potter universe, and led me at age 13 to write a story in which Fox Mulder puked on someone's shoes. Hilarious at the time.
Nader is doing the exact same thing. Don't believe me? Let me walk you through a hypothetical. For a moment, don't think of Ralph Nader as a 75-year-old man, but instead as a nerdy high-school boy. Sure, Ralph can spout off consumer safety issues like baseball stats, and he's the head of the debate club, but he lacks a few key social graces. And, like any stereotypical high school nerd, Ralph also has a big crush on a celebrity -- Corporate America, the beautiful woman on These United States!, Ralph's favorite long-running TV show.
Ralph and Corporate America - or "Corrie" for short -- don't have much in common. On the show she dates rich bad boys, men like Ted Turner, or, at her wildest, the quirky-but-safe Paul Newman. Ralph doesn't let their differences deter him, though. Since kindergarten he has fantasized that Corrie secretly loves the same things as him - and if she'd just take the time to talk with him, she'd realize it. Thus he's pined after Corrie for years, writing her letters and trying to meet her, without any luck (one time Nader received the book he sent her, Unsafe at Any Speed, back at his doorstep marked with a big "Return to Sender" stamp, the wrapping still on).
By the time Ralph reaches his senior year of high school, he's tired of pursuing Corrie. And while he still wants to make Corporate America his girl, he also knows there's a good chance he won't get her. Maybe some guy like him will, some day - but not him. So at night he vents his frustration and lust by scribbling stories where all of Corrie's precious rich boys tie her up and do her doggie style. In the stories, Corrie realizes what a terrible person she's been and comes crawling to Ralph, asking how she can make things better. Writing the stories doesn't get Ralph what he wants, but his imagination provides him a certain satisfaction.
So now imagine Nader is 75 again, his TV characters are real people (or, in Corrie's case, have corporate personhood), and...everything else is pretty much the same. Actually, I haven't read Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! yet; for all I know, what I just outlined is literally what happens in the book. Hopefully with a good Kirk and Spock sex scene thrown in.
Follow Meg Favreau on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ihaveapuma
Myriam Miedzian: Is Ralph Nader On To Something?
It's difficult to argue with the basic premise of Nader's book -- that it's hopeless to hope for real change as long as government officials are on the take.
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Hey Meg, how about a link to something by someone who has actually read the book and can tell us something about it?
Your column seems to be as much as about you, if not more so, than about Nader.
Why do you feel free to comment on a book you haven't read?
Personally I found it funny, but then again, I'm an admin on a (currently inactive, but still with an archive) website that produced radio plays based on fan fiction, so I get the alot of the jokes about the fan fiction world Ms. Favreau is making, having been knee-deep in for awhile.
Additionally, the pretentsion of the whole "fictional visions - new realities" tag, just because he is uncomfortable with the word "novel" for a long-form work of fiction, is inherently silly to me. Novel is the word we have for the thing he wrote. It is perfectly legitimate way to get one's political message out there.
As for the vote-splitter thing. That he did take votes that might have otherwise gone to Gore is not really in dispute. The question is whether that would have been enough (many might have just stayed home instead of voting for Gore) to prevent the smash and grav job Bush and Harris did. I personally don't think it would hav emade enough of a difference and people should just get off poor Ralph's case.
Finally, since I'm a shameless self-promotor, the website I mentioned earlier is fanfictionmysterytheatre dot com.
Why is this under comedy? It's not funny. Or was Hufpo afraid of posting a blog that critisized a book the the blogger never read.
This is a knee-jerk panning of Ralph Nader. The phrase "vote-splitter" says it all. Ms. Favreau is one of those dems that blame Nader for what Jeb Bush with the help of Katherine Harris and theSupreme court did. The hero of "Only the Super-rich" is not corporate america but super-rich people who are at the end of their lives and are no longer concerned about making more money but with doing something good. Mr. Nader said that the idea came from a meeting with Warren Buffet.
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