From pollster Yankelovich (co-author, Starting with the People, 1988; New Rules, 1981, etc.)a blueprint for shaping a broad American consensus on urgent social problems. At sword's point with ``the Culture of Technical Control,'' an elite with a fetish for undigested data, the public has fled voting booths in despair, Yankelovich suggests, while politicians and the media hypocritically rail against seesawing mass sentiment as they're following it at its' superficial worst. The result, he believes, is a weakening of ``the national will to confront the obstacles standing in the way of strengthening the quality of public judgment indispensable to self-governance and consensus building.'' His remedy is to accelerate to process between ``mass opinion'' (people's instant reactions) and ``public judgment'' (a more considered stance derived after full consideration of a policy's consequences). Though sometimes given to phrases repeated like mantras (e.g., ``choicework,'' ``epistemological anxiety''), Yankelovich explains his theories clearly, with careful analyses of his own poll findings, and even of the thinking of heavyweight theorists like Max Weber, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is particularly effective in discussing maddeningly contradictory public responses to questions such as AIDS, the competitiveness issue, environmental issues, education, and Soviet-American relations. However, his ten rules for resolution (forming stable, coherent judgments) sometimes sound simplistic (``Give the public the incentive of knowing that someone is listening..and cares''). A deft analysis of what ails the American body politic, but a too elastic outline of how to mold public opinion into an instrument of rational public policy.
Pub Date: May 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-8156-2515-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Syracuse Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
From New York Times reporter Bernstein (Fragile Glory, 1990), a stinging attack on multiculturalism, a ``messianic political program...[that] does not take kindly to true difference.'' Just as the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution fell into a dÇrapage (slide) that led to the Reign of Terror, Bernstein avers, so the civil-rights revolution has lurched into a leftist intolerance that is contradictory to its professed pluralistic ideals. Broader-ranging than Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education (1990), this analysis covers not only higher education, but also elementary and secondary school systems, state legislatures, corporations, newsrooms, even the National Council of Churches. All of these institutions, it is alleged, are increasingly being assaulted by pious, often well-meaning ``diversity experts'' who peddle fraudulent visions of an oppressive American and Western tradition. Bernstein sensibly contends that racism, sexism, and homophobia are receding to the margins of American life, not growing, as is often claimed. He neatly disposes of claims that today's ethnic and racial groups represent an exotic new force in American life by noting that immigration was proportionately higher in earlier eras, and that today's immigrants, unlike their predecessors, were constantly exposed to American culture before coming here. Bernstein offers chilling examples of how ``diversity'' has been used as a bludgeon by leftists in battle over high school curricula, sexual harassment hearings that deny due process, the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's initial voyage to the New World, and school courses that stigmatize ``dead white European males.'' Worst of all, Bernstein charges, diversity advocates, now comfortably lodged in the intelligentsia, question cultural norms that have historically enhanced upward mobility in the US, thereby damaging the disadvantaged whose interest they claim to serve. A sophisticated, tough-minded examination of the newest fault line in late 20th century American culture. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41156-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Detroit's story of an undercover sting operation into the Hell's Angels is quick and breezy but insults the reader with its sketchy rendering of a fascinating scenario. One can sympathize with Detroit (a pseudonymous screenwriter), whose account of a police infiltration of the notorious biker gang, naturally invites comparisons with Hunter S. Thompson's authoritative tale. This sparse made-for-TV product pales next to Thompson's searing depictions of life with the Angels. One day in 1977, Orange County police detective Victoria Seele (Detroit uses fictional names throughout the book) accepts an assignment to ride on the back of Clifford Mowery's Harley-Davidson. Mowery, a hardscrabble biker and convict with a long rap sheet, grudgingly offers to serve as an informant in order to stay out of jail. For eight months, the two crisscross Southern California making undercover drug buys from motorcycle-gang members. Seele, with her surfer looks, awkwardly survives parties at which she is the only one not using drugs and not wearing the typical biker garb (denim vest, waist chains, and strap-on buck knife). During one particularly vulgar Angels party, Seele nearly jumps into bed with two other women in order not to blow her cover. Detroit sprays his text with scare phrases, telling us, in case we haven't caught on, that these people are dangerous, and here Seele is risking her life. Occasionally, we are given glimpses into Seele's supposedly deteriorating home life, but like the rest of the details here, these scenes lack the power necessary to instill even a meager visceral attachment to the characters. The pieces (and sources) for a spectacular story are here: leather-clad bikers, courageous cops, and a backdrop of Southern California's sleaziest bars and dustiest back roads. But for all its drama, this is, in the end, forgettable. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93671-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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