{"product_id":"i-told-you-so-isbn-9780807044513","title":"I Told You So","description":"\u003ci\u003eI Told You So\u003c\/i\u003e is a hilarious, bittersweet, and politically acute survival guide. In collected columns and routines, Kate Clinton gleefully details personal coping techniques tested over a lifetime. They're perfectly suited for political and cultural upheaval: wildcatting for democracy, curbing your cynicism, and changing the climate. Read them and you'll never be voted off the island.\u003ci\u003eI Told You So\u003c\/i\u003e is true, terrifying, and coffee-out-yournose funny. I love Kate Clinton. Buy the book, or I'll sic the NSA on your ass.—Rachel Maddow\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Kate Clinton makes our world bigger by sharing hers. With her laser-beam wit, she offers up a series of bittersweet, twisted, tart and tangy, honest, and from-the-heart essays. I enjoyed every minute of viewing the world through her eyes. All that and she is funny.\"—Lewis Black, \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Show\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A hilarious, jam-packed, and fun-filled collection of thoughts from the mind of an American original.\"—Lily Tomlin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Clinton proves in these essays—which cover topics from the inherent lesbianism of Sex and the City to three-dimensional thesauri—that she still ranks among the sharpest, funniest working comedians.\"—\u003ci\u003eMs.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[Clinton] throws just as many ingredients into the pot—she riffs on Hillary Clinton and waterboarding, baptism and Provincetown—but comedic license and her own wicked sense of humor allow Clinton a kind of thematic ADD that fiction would not afford.\"—Kathi Wolfe, \u003ci\u003eWashington Blade\u003c\/i\u003eA humorist for over twenty-five years, \u003cb\u003eKate Clinton \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of \u003ci\u003eWhat the L? \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eDon’t Get Me Started, \u003c\/i\u003ehas produced eight comedy collections, and has an active tour schedule. She lives with her partner, Urvashi Vaid, in New York.\u003ci\u003eI Told You So \u003c\/i\u003ewas completed at the end of July 2008. This book is a\u003cbr\u003e collection of columns from magazines, essays translated from earlycentury\u003cbr\u003e Bloggerean, and material written especially for this compilation.\u003cbr\u003e After I sent the document file of my book to my editor just by\u003cbr\u003e warily pressing Send, I made a big flourish of checking off the last day\u003cbr\u003e of my six-month writing schedule. I cleaned off my desk, filed two\u003cbr\u003e trees’ worth of hard-copy rewrites, and turned my full attention to\u003cbr\u003e writing for my summer show in Provincetown.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e For more than twenty years I have performed in July and August\u003cbr\u003e in Provincetown. I write something new every day, especially if the\u003cbr\u003e weather is bad; I ride my bike down to the club and try the lines out\u003cbr\u003e at night. My audience knows that a lot of the material is being workshopped\u003cbr\u003e for the show I will take on the road in the fall. They know\u003cbr\u003e because generally I tell them.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Some weeks a brilliant three pages of newly minted material becomes\u003cbr\u003e an aside after only three shows. But other times a throwaway\u003cbr\u003e line gets a surprising response and over a few performances grows to\u003cbr\u003e a brand-new ten minutes. My audiences like being part of the process.\u003cbr\u003e They often talk to me after a show: “When you said that, I thought\u003cbr\u003e you were going to go this way,” as if the show were on MapQuest, but\u003cbr\u003e then they finish with the perfect punch line that had eluded me. Since\u003cbr\u003e I have joke dyslexia, they kindly point out when I have reversed setup\u003cbr\u003e and punch line altogether. Or they tell me their stories. I take notes. I\u003cbr\u003e promise them royalties.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e My partner of twenty years has said to me after almost every show\u003cbr\u003e she has seen, “Well, that was too long, but you need to do more political\u003cbr\u003e stuff.” Over the years, and because of the world, I have become\u003cbr\u003e more political. Actually I am a full-blown junkie. My shows reflect\u003cbr\u003e that. On the Provincetown entertainment menu of drag shows, piano\u003cbr\u003e bars, Broadway adaptations, theater, and comedy, I am the entrée\u003cbr\u003e known as “that political one.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In the past, doing a lot of political material for people on their\u003cbr\u003e precious one- or two-week vacation in a resort town could be dicey.\u003cbr\u003e They have been at the beach all day reading trashy beach books or\u003cbr\u003e boogie boarding. They have not kept up. Some nights I felt that I was\u003cbr\u003e anchoring a news show, not so much doing a comedy show. Instead of\u003cbr\u003e laughter, I would hear, “I wish she had this on PowerPoint.”\u003cbr\u003e The summer of 2008 was like nothing I had ever witnessed. It\u003cbr\u003e was not just because critical mass had been reached in the possession\u003cbr\u003e of personal handheld devices. Nor was it because the town mothers\u003cbr\u003e and fathers had finally gotten some decent radio transmitters and\u003cbr\u003e fewer people had to stand out in parking lots screaming into their\u003cbr\u003e cell phones, “I can’t hear you!” That summer Wi-Fi was \u003ci\u003ethe \u003c\/i\u003epreferred\u003cbr\u003e guesthouse amenity. More than a private bath. No one wanted off the\u003cbr\u003e grid. No one wanted to miss anything. Even on vacation.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Would the Hillary supporters get over themselves and make the\u003cbr\u003e change to Obama? Could Obama really beat McCain? The town slept\u003cbr\u003e fitfully, waiting for a text message about Obama’s choice for vice president.\u003cbr\u003e Would he pick Hillary? In the line at the Grand Union, strangers\u003cbr\u003e would say, “Can’t wait to hear what you have to say about Palin.”\u003cbr\u003e Increasingly panicked mass e-mails from California warned of the\u003cbr\u003e passage of Prop Hate, the anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative. Everyone\u003cbr\u003e bemoaned high gas prices. Bear Stearns Week trumped the fun\u003cbr\u003e of Bear Week. International tourists crowded town during Carnival\u003cbr\u003e Week. Some shops accepted euros. In one ominous sign, the store\u003cbr\u003e called Don’t Panic was shuttered.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e When your situation room is a resort town in August, it is difficult\u003cbr\u003e to convey the seriousness of some developments to vacationers. It is\u003cbr\u003e also perhaps cruel. In one late August show I joked about George W.,\u003cbr\u003e back stateside from the Chinese Olympics, which had been brought\u003cbr\u003e to us by our own credit card debt. With not one little toenail left on\u003cbr\u003e his moral footprint, and still president-erect from cruising the Olympic\u003cbr\u003e volleyball babes and hectoring China on its human rights abuses,\u003cbr\u003e our spectator in chief excoriated Russia for its preemptive strike on\u003cbr\u003e Georgia. You could practically hear the world snorting, or maybe it\u003cbr\u003e was me.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e After the show, I was talking to one very sunburned woman and\u003cbr\u003e realized she thought Russia had invaded the state of Georgia. (No, it\u003cbr\u003e was not Sarah Palin.) She confided, “If they can fix the Atlanta airport,\u003cbr\u003e I’m all for it. They should give them Florida while they’re at it.” But\u003cbr\u003e even at half-attention, people were more politically and passionately\u003cbr\u003e interested in politics than I could recall.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e After Labor Day and before my tomatoes had ripened, dammit,\u003cbr\u003e I finished my summer-long run and returned to Manhattan with a\u003cbr\u003e shiny new show for fall touring. But every day brought such dizzying\u003cbr\u003e change, I wrote new material and eased out pieces that seemed dated\u003cbr\u003e with just a week’s shelf life, because the show was getting as long as a\u003cbr\u003e Bruce Springsteen show. I felt like an embedded war correspondent\u003cbr\u003e just a sentence or two ahead of breaking news.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Whenever I thought back to some sections of the book I had had\u003cbr\u003e to turn in at the end of July, they seemed like all setup without punch\u003cbr\u003e line, cruel foreplay. I regretted not being able to finish the Clinton-\u003cbr\u003e Obama\/McCain-Palin\/Prop Hate\/campaign\/election story lines. It\u003cbr\u003e seemed unfair, unfinished.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As we who wanted a woman president almost learned from Sarah\u003cbr\u003e Palin, be careful what you wish for. In early September, I received a\u003cbr\u003e call from my editor at Beacon Press requesting an additional chapter\u003cbr\u003e to conclude the political dramas I had been following. Though I had\u003cbr\u003e a busy fall tour schedule, it was like receiving a reprieve from the governor.\u003cbr\u003e And at sixty, I find I work well on deadlines.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The stay of publication also allowed me to move on. This time,\u003cbr\u003e when I finished the last chapter, the book felt finished. I felt finished.\u003cbr\u003e Eight long years of being Kate the Designated Bush Watcher can\u003cbr\u003e make you very cynical. Yes it can. I am finished living in I-told-youso.\u003cbr\u003e The schaden is off my freude. I am eager to transition into my new\u003cbr\u003e job: Kate the Happy Chronicler of the Successes of the Bush Toxic\u003cbr\u003e Cleanup Committee, the Great Restoration Hardware Voting Rights\u003cbr\u003e Act, the International War Crimes Tribunal, the Truth and Reconciliation\u003cbr\u003e Commission, the Actual Intelligent Design Project, the Stepping\u003cbr\u003e Aside of the Baby Boomer Ritual, and the Cynicism Abatement\u003cbr\u003e Task Force.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303299633381,"sku":"NP9780807044513","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807044513.jpg?v=1767729715","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/i-told-you-so-isbn-9780807044513","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}