Political Animal: I'd Rather Have a Better Country

Journalist Brian Wendell Morton has spent more than eight years documenting Washington, D. C.'s Oz-like world in weekly columns for Baltimore's City Paper titled, "Political Animal." Eric Engberg of CBS News once said, "Washington is ten square miles, surrounded by reality." Morton points out the surreality of a city where a popular president was almost hounded out of office for a consensual sex act, yet another president whose popularity ratings hover at historic lows can't be held accountable for a war waged under false pretenses, torture, malfeasance, and the destruction of an entire American city. Political Animal points out the discrepancy between reality and the skewed views of the political media who cover it. Some would argue that this media would fiddle while Rome burned if it meant rising stock prices and better ratings. From the early 1990s through the pages of last week's headlines, Morton takes a fearless and provocative stroll through the issues of politics, race, the media, guns, drugs, religion, and more.