SOURCE: Tyrrell, Jr., R. Emmett. “The Worst Book of the Year.” American Spectator 27, no. 2 (February 1994): 20-1.

In the following essay, Tyrrell argues that MacKinnon's arguments in Only Words are both “specious and sophomoric.”

It is that joyous time of year when I and my colleagues on the J. Gordon Coogler Committee confer the Coogler laurels upon the author of that degenerate literary work that we adjudge the Worst Book of the Year. Generally the award is conferred a couple of months into the new year, for in this era of widespread higher education a stupendous number of very bad books are published. Reading them all takes a vast amount of time. In fact, reading merely one or two can be time-consuming. Some are sleep-inducing (particularly those written by the so-called professoriate) and others can leave the reader nauseated (I have in mind the dreadful stuff written by that...