It contributes to people getting into a negative, self-attacking mentality.”

Perhaps in a bid to blunt the effect of Clinton’s self-attacking ad campaign, Sen. Barack Obama today began airing what his aides are calling “his politest ads to date.”

That, at any rate, is the experience recorded by Glasgow Phillips in "The Royal Nonesuch," a darkly comic, self-attacking anti-memoir that in its better moments offers an acid critique of contemporary American culture and its twin obsessions: fame and riches.