Willie Geist - American Freak Show

In just three short years, Willie Geist has gone from behind-the-scenes producer at MSNBC to rising on-air star, as host of Way Too Early with Willie Geist and co-host of Morning Joe. Now, in his first book, Geist offers a hilarious insider’s perspective on the absurdity of today’s media culture—looking from the inside out. AMERICAN FREAK SHOW (Hyperion; October 12, 2010; $23.99 hardcover) sends up America’s endless parade of giant political and pop culture personalities, inflated by the Internet and 24-hour cable news. Characters in the book range from Barack Obama and Sarah Palin to Snooki and the Salahis. In a series of smart, biting satirical essays, Geist captures the ridiculous essence of today’s pseudocelebrity-obsessed culture. Among other things, he reveals, for the first time anywhere, Sarah Palin’s 2013 Presidential Inauguration speech, broadcast to a national audience live from the site of WWE’s Monday Night Raw as a tribute to “Real America.” Geist describes President Obama’s chance, late-night encounter in the White House kitchen with Dick Cheney, who, it turns out, is stilling running the government from the basement. The reader goes inside the room at Tiger Woods’s first meeting of celebrity sex addicts, where Charlie Sheen, Fidel Castro, and Angela