IN THE MAIL: Christopher Buckley’s new novel, Boomsday.
With Boomsday looming as 77 million baby boomers get ready to retire and crash Social Security, Cassandra Devine, a sarcastic spin doctor by day and a ferocious blogger by night, calls for a revolution. Why should the under-35 crowd pay higher taxes to support the “Ungreatest Generation?” What have boomers done for anyone? Look at Cassandra’s heinous father. He absconded with her Yale tuition and convinced her to enlist, leading to her encounter with a land mine while escorting Massachusetts senator Randolph Jepperson. After going to jail for instigating anti-oldster riots at golf courses, Cass takes a cue from Jonathan Swift and offers her own outrageous “modest proposal.” With one eye on the White House and the other on tough and lovely Cass, blue-blood Jepperson decides to back her provocation. As Cass’s mensch of a boss observes, “The line dividing reality from absurdity in this country has finally disappeared.”
Well, that’s certainly true. . . .