Is it a stunt book, or racist, or just a bad blog book-of-the-month?

The Definitive Guide to Stuff White People Like: The Unique Taste of Millions (Random House Trade Paperback Original, $14) has been cooling on my desk these last few days while I try to consider whether I have anything of use, or interest, or even moderate tastefulness, to say about it.

And I think I do. I’ve collected stunt books over the years — The Official Preppy Handbook! The Sloane Ranger Handbook! (the British equivalent of preppies) – so I know a humorous deconstruction of an easily slammed lifestyle when I see one.

And I’m becoming more familiar with books launched off blogs, as this one is: Generally they don’t work. That’s because you read blogs for infobits — killing a minute or two of time between surfing to something more substantial, or something at least different: The Internet works as if invented for the Attention Deficit Disordered. And there’s an inevitable rise and fall in blogs: The fashion criticism site gofugyourself.com was on for awhile, particularly concerning all matters J. Lo (about whom it wrote with an evil brilliance), but then it seemed to wander off and lose focus and turn over too many days to “Intern George,” and then there was the resulting book, and the book somehow lost the appeal of the blog, plus you had to lay down real money to buy it. Likewise the Television Without Pity site, which chronicles shows on which its summaries are better than watching the real thing (I direct you to the first-season summaries of VH-1’s “Rock of Love,” particularly the summary of the “meet the parents” episode, which may be the funniest, most risque thing on any site on the Internet, period). The Television Without Pity book didn’t work, either. But then there are sites that you are just a little bit embarrassed to admit that you visit — not icanhascheezburger.com, which is both feline and genius and surely will never disgrace itself with a bad book, but certainly, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. It’s the kind of site you’re pretty worried will show up in your browsing history and give people the wrong idea that you are not reading it for the irony alone, and in some ways the site is a one-trick pony. Because: How many ways can you slice up Teva-wearing, Prius-driving, conscientious-parenting, TV-limiting, hardwood-craving urban recyclers? Well, just about that many, and then you’re done. Next joke, please: Who’s getting fat at theskinnywebsite.com?

It’s not that you won’t recognize the lifestyle — the symbolic almighty Prius! The people who blog about their Prius and take its picture and give it a name and refer to its as if it is a particularly accomplished family member and then parade it around so much they’re burning more gas than you, Mr. Guilt-Ridden Chevy Suburban. The always-gifted children! Not having a TV exclusively so that you can tell people you don’t have a TV, hence you are superior and lack mind rot! Unless you have a TV and admit only to watching “The Wire” and “Arrested Development” and “The Simpsons.” Hardwood floors! Liberal politics!

Here I have a confession: I am probably a barbarian on several of these fronts, so I am predisposed to not guffaw. I live in the suburbs, and I only have hardwood in the kitchen.The rest of the house is thickly carpeted. And not only carpeted, but not even carpeted in a neutral: It’s a rich teal green, and I only wish that none of you have to figure out how to buy paint to coordinate with that. Also: I drive a Pontiac. And in my intensive child-hauling, “can you drive the team?” days I drove a GMC Yukon roughly the size of a city block. I never had my children identified as “gifted,” because, being a bad yuppie, I never quite understood the social distinction of it (and yes, they grew into accomplished students nonethless, because they lived in a house full of books and British comedies on DVD, but I have since sat through innumerable parent gatherings in which the sole criterion for how a school is doing seemed to be how the ”identified gifted and talented” population performs, so I get it, OK? I just think it’s wrong to pre-judge lifetime academic potential in the third grade). Hence I understand that hell — probably a nylon-carpeted hell in a garish primary color – surely awaits me at the end of my cable-watching, gas lawn-mowing days. In the meantime, what’s on Fearnet?

Still, I direct you to infobit #149 in the book: Self-Importance. “Due to an undying need to share their life story with everyone who wil listen, white people have taken to blogging in massive numbers, though it is no surprise that many have simply turned their journals/diaries into blogs where they talk about the latest episode of American Idol, Darfur, their experience at a coffee shop, and their concerns about the future. … What has been less expected is the need for white people to document in blog format any experience that takes more than a week. Pregnancy, vacations to Asia and South America, renovations, child rearing, and car restoration have all become blogs that encourage the rest of the world to take notice of the astute observations and talent of the undiscovered writer.”

And, yes, I am pre-humbled by the irony of making these observations via blog. Still: It’s a blog at a newspaper that believes firmly in diversity and accountability, and I have never abused said blog to rhapsodize about what is, after all, a car.