As anyone who has listened to his podcast or radio show knows, Anthony Cumia is not shy about speaking his mind, and in his second book, “Spare Me” (Post Hill Press), he continues his scathing critiques of the people and issues that currently plague him.
From Owen Benjamin’s flat-Earth fanaticism (“Owen is very intelligent and mentally ill, in my opinion”) to his long-running feud with actor and comedian Bill Burr (“It was a personal matter between Bill, his wife and me. It’s not as vulgar as it sounds”), Cumia looks back on some of the more high-profile altercations he’s had (and won) recently.
He also touches on everything from the 2021 storming of the Capitol to Black Lives Matter to what Donald Trump will do in November’s presidential election. “My greatest fear is that the election will again be stolen from him — not by paper ballots or flawed voting machines, but by the mainstream media once again wreaking havoc on him and sadly influencing the minds of Americans with an average IQ of 98,” he writes.
But Cumia saves his harshest criticism for the final chapter, an exhaustive critique of what he sees as the scourge of cancel culture, which he says he has experienced firsthand.
When he was fired by SiriusXM in 2014 for his “racist and hateful rhetoric” on social media, Cumia started his own Compound Media network instead. “I literally had to create a broadcasting company to say the crap I wasn’t allowed to say on any other platform,” he wrote.
“How insane is that?”
In fact, in Cumia’s view, the entire country is being held hostage by special interests: “They may only represent a tiny fraction of the population, but they have the power to ruin your life,” he writes.
The important thing, he concludes, is to keep fighting: “You don’t have to agree or disagree with anyone’s opinion, but you should agree that no one should get cancelled or lose everything for simply expressing their opinion. ‘Finally, those guys are shit!’ Gavin Newsham
