Monday, January 02, 2006

Your Call is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny

Well, I've given it an honest effort, and I just can't stomach any more of this unpalatable mixture of educated whining, socialist diatribe, and statistics. After several chapters, I think I can sum up this book in a small number of simple sentences:

Advertising/PR is bad.
Big business is bad.
CEOs are bad.
The government is bad.
The pharmaceutical industry is bad.
The insurance industry is bad.
Big-box superstores are bad.
The media are bad.
War is bad (duh!)

Nowhere in the middle of all this ranting do I get a concrete idea of *why* the author thinks these things are bad. I actually agree with some of the stuff in this book, but the way it was presented didn't help to give me any further rational ground for my beliefs. I think Laura Penny is trying to distract us with her fancy writing, her "research"-based accusations and her assumption that if she gets sufficiently outraged about any particular cultural force in North American society (take your pick from the list above) then her readers must feel that way too. Alas, I fell for the cute title, was taken in by its promise of truth - sorta like all that bullshit that Ms. Penny is railing against. Gee, how ironic.

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