From the moment you see this latest spoken word collection, you know exactly where Jello Biafra is heading. The cover features toilet paper patterned with the American flag and the discs feature cartoons of donkey and elephant-headed serpents. This alone should be enough to send Democratic and Republic leaders into fits of apoplexy, but the actual speeches contained in this three disc set are the real danger to the establishment. Why? Because Jello Biafra is witty, intelligent, impassioned and informed. While I personally cannot agree with everything he says (and over a three hour period I don't think I'd completely agree with anyone), Biafra is a convincing public speaker with an agenda: Become the Media.

Recorded over the summer and early fall of 2000, these speeches capture the frustration of disenfranchised America. Although he touches on many topics, including gun control and free speech, Biafra's monologues focus on the influence the wealthy have on the American political system. In his words, "their job is to protect old money, period." This inequality leaves most environmental, labor and cultural groups spitting with impotent frustration. Biafra, however, takes a more optimistic tack and chooses to remind listeners of the power they still can, and do, wield. He urges people to vote, to learn and discover facts for themselves, to spend their dollars ethically, and to spread the word. This exhortation to speak out is the collection's underlying theme. Biafra declares that the 'zine format is the greatest legacy left by punk rock, in that it has inspired individuals to gather and disseminate information on their own in a world where that job is increasingly left up to corporate-controlled institutions. This sort of call-to-arms is what makes Jello Biafra a national treasure and Become the Media an important document of a troubled time.

Although his message is quite serious, Biafra's accounts also brim with wry humor. In relating his own experiences from the oddities of the Republican and Democratic national conventions filled with prostitutes and unknowingly ironic coffee table books, Biafra's humor punches as large a hole in these sinking ships as his most vitrolic attacks. By turns funny and frightening, this collection is a clear indication of why a skilled orator can still generate and energize crowds.