Book Review: Just Off the Norm

Reviewed by Erin Britton

One man’s vehement perspective on truth, justice, and the American way

Norman L. Bender’s Just Off the Norm: Published Opinions on American Politics and Culture by One of Its Most Trenchant Observers presents an insightful, varied, and likely polarizing collection of political and cultural commentary, portraying several decades of civic engagement through the lens of Bender’s resolute dedication to truth, democracy, and public accountability.

While the book is not a memoir in the conventional sense, nor is it simply a collection of opinion pieces. Rather, the singular and personal perspectives that accompany Bender’s recounting of the 21st century to date make the book both an annotated history and a public diary of an indefatigably curious, consistently indignant, and unashamedly patriotic observer

“This is about American Democracy—embrace it, love it, or it leaves you.”

The title’s self-effacing pun, Just Off the Norm, indicates the author’s rather irreverent style and method, which are maintained throughout the book, despite the individual works being written at different times and published in different periodicals. Bender positions himself not as a revolutionary outsider but as a citizen-satirist who insists on decency, truth, and irony in a culture seemingly addicted to hypocrisy.

In the introduction, he identifies curiosity as his defining trait: “when it comes to curiosity,” he writes, “I’m in the top one-tenth of 1 percent.” This claim proves accurate. Across 15 thematic sections—ranging from presidential politics to veterans’ affairs, women’s rights to the gun debate—Bender’s persistent questioning propels the reader through a panoramic moral history of contemporary America.

The foreword by Stuart H. Brody situates Bender’s writing within the moral tradition of public integrity. Brody briefly sketches the trajectory of a commentator whose op-eds have influenced the national discourse in myriad ways: Bender’s phrasing featured in Barack Obama’s 2008 victory speech, while his ideas have been echoed in both late-night satire and public policy. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Brody also describes Just Off the Norm as “a portrayal of America’s recurring failures but also its instinct for greatness,” and this characterization is apt. What distinguishes Bender’s writing from that of other commentators—and what lends the collection coherence despite its wide-ranging subject matter—is his clear faith in the possibility of moral renewal via public candor.

To further illustrate this belief, the early sections of Just Off the Norm, such as “They Had the Presidential Seal” and “To Those Who Served, and to Those Who Loved America So Much They Very Nearly Served,” neatly exemplify Bender’s signature technique: wry political critique anchored in anecdote, humor, and moral clarity. This allows him to elucidate some uncomfortable truths and hypocrisies.

For instance, a 2000 letter published in Time magazine contrasts George W. Bush’s financial windfalls with Dick Cheney’s severance package: “When President Clinton asked Americans, ‘Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?’ he could count on at least two gentlemen to say yes.” Bender’s singular wit is unmistakable: sardonic, concise, and importantly, grounded in verifiable fact.

Bender’s early commentary on the Iraq War (“The Emperor Has No Flight Jacket”) and his spoof “diaries” of Karl Rove also reveal his mastery of satire as both a teaching aid and a moral instrument. “Of all those called before the 9/11 committee, only Mr. Bush would not appear on his own, insisting on the spinal support of Vice President Dick Cheney.” In these works, he uses parody not to evade seriousness but to intensify it.

But behind the clever wordplay lies a veteran’s dismay at the moral evasions of leaders who sent others to fight wars they somehow always managed to avoid. His understandable refrain (“those in government who have actually served in foreign wars tend to move much more cautiously toward combat”) in this regard recurs with increasing bitterness throughout the book.

The notion that “President Trump will always fight for America” draws particular ire from Bender, prompting a sardonic reflection that only just manages to avoid outright anger:

“As a veteran, I find this an interesting slant, since his grandfather never served his own country (Germany) and whose father never wore the uniform of our country during World War II, and Mr. Trump himself got six deferments.

The last one was for a bone spur or ingrown toenail or whatever.

So when I hear that Mr. Trump is going to—again—’fight for America,’ I just gotta think, ‘That’s a first.’”

Still, despite the occasional measured outburst, as Just Off the Norm moves through the Obama and Trump years, Bender’s tone shifts from ironic bemusement to something more elegiac. The collection’s later sections, particularly “When They Say It’s Not About the Guns…” and “Reality Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias,” reveal both exhaustion and resolve when it comes to America’s ever shifting direction.

In this way, his essays on mass shootings, racial division, and civic decline balance outrage with moral clarity. For instance, “Our president ignores the climate change involving the weather and incites the climate of resentment,” he writes in a column from 2019. This sentence encapsulates the fusion of moral critique and rhetorical economy that defines Bender’s style.

He excels at capturing American absurdities. The same patterns—self-serving leaders, selective patriotism, economic inequity—recur over the years. The section titles indicate a humorous stance here, particularly “They Are Women and They Roar—and Vote,” “This Sporting Strife,” and “A Tribute to the Capitol Schleps,” each reflecting distinct moral terrain, from gender politics to the commodification of sports to the resilience of democracy.

As a consequence, Just Off the Norm covers serious ground. The collection of brief, date-stamped essays, including the original publication credits and occasional postscripts, presents a longitudinal study of Bender’s evolving worldview. His postscripts are often micro-essays, reflecting the hindsight of a curious observer who never stops updating his moral ledger. His vantage point is that of a citizen who measures time not in administrations but in arguments.

Stylistically, Bender’s writing is plainspoken but never plain. His humor rests on insight and reversal: “If Clinton should go to jail,” he writes of the email scandal, “Ivanka should be her roommate.” His wordplay (e.g., “Forty-take-the-Fifth,” “Don the Con and Rico Rudy”) may verge on bluntness, but his moral intent is clear. He deploys levity not for cheap laughs but to expose the dissonance between rhetoric and action.

But what renders Just Off the Norm more than an archive of newspaper wit is its emotional throughline. Bender’s reflections on military service are suffused with tenderness and anger, with the pen portraits of fellow veterans, from Chick Aimes to Tom Coady, elevating his opinions beyond punditry. Indeed, they anchor his political skepticism in lived experience and emphatic understanding.

For Bender, patriotism is not a slogan but a debt. Thus, his essays on draft dodgers and “flag-waving conservatives” who have never served blend indignation with rueful comedy. In reflecting on such figures, he quips “America: love it (they say they did) or leave it (made darn sure they didn’t),” thereby inverting a nationalist cliché into an indictment. Of course, such discourse is geared toward American readers.

Yet despite his cynicism, Bender never succumbs to despair. The closing sections and the conclusion (“Are These Emperors Clothed?”) circle back to his enduring question: What does truth look like in an era of spectacle and deceit? His answer, implicit rather than didactic, is that truth demands curiosity, courage, and humility—virtues that public life rarely rewards but without which democracy withers.

Bender’s quest to answer this question has generated tens of thousands of words of commentary, and the sheer number of columns and historical references in Just Off the Norm may overwhelm readers seeking narrative cohesion. The essays often revisit familiar themes (Trump’s mendacity, Republican hypocrisy, the decline of civic discourse), again risking redundancy.

But Just Off the Norm offers more than partisan commentary. It serves as a record of language under pressure—the way public words can still aspire to moral clarity in a culture of disinformation. Bender’s lifelong insistence that “the truth is in here” (a deliberate inversion of The X-Files motto) positions his work within a democratic tradition of truth-telling that spans national and local perspectives.

The collection succeeds not because it overcomes the dilemmas it reveals but because it insists on revealing them again and again. It highlights how civic responsibility begins with attention—to words, to facts, to irony. In a literary culture increasingly detached from journalism, Bender reclaims the op-ed as a moral form. In the face of increasing cynicism, his writing shows the need to keep faith with democracy.

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