This year has been a year of hope. Barack Obama was elected on Nov. 4, Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous estate produced another masterpiece, and Britney Spears has managed to climb out of the smut pages and into the Billboard 100 once again. It seems like anything’s possible! But not everyone is bathing in the good vibes, and they deserve to be represented, too. So here’s a look at two films and two books of 2008 that just love to hate.



Films

“Saw V:” Thomas Hobbes would have been proud of this film, a misanthrope’s delight. Films like this seem to exist only to prove Hobbes’s rage-fueled philosophical vision: that man cares only about his self-interest and that life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Characters self-inflict tracheometries, saw their arms off, murder their compatriots to survive, and still end up dead.



“Punisher: War Zone:” Not only does the protagonist get to realize his sadistic fantasies, but the film’s creators realize their own upon the audience, as they cause it all sorts of pain. As USA Today’s reviewer put it: “At one point, the Punisher is asked who punishes him. The better question for those who made this inane bloodfest is: Why punish us?”



Books

“The Second Plane” by Martin Amis: Martin Amis hates religion in general and Islam in particular, and this book is his little opportunity to vent freely. Bigotry fuels essays and stories that ridicule Islamists and attack religion for its lack of reason. Does that sound angry? Terry Eagleton, an English philosopher, declared that Amis’s writings read like those of a “BNP thug”—or, to put it in American, a Neo-Nazi skinhead.



“The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics And The Cult of Personality” by Jerome Corsi: It’s no exaggeration to call this extra-long political pamphlet a labor of pure hate. It was born out of one purpose: to sink the ship of Obama like Corsi did to that of John Kerry four years before. But unfortunately for him, his allegations about Obama’s “extensive connections to Islam” and continued drug use into law school and beyond failed to stop the campaign for change. One can only wonder how full of spite Corsi must be now, if this was how he was before his desires were thwarted.



—Sanders I. Bernstein is the outgoing Books Editor. He loves writing hateful lists.