Solid work from a cultural critic who merits a broader audience.
A bittersweet, breezy, smart look at current politics in the larger context of American culture—or what passes for it.
“If Bill Clinton was the classical analog president—eager to hug the whole world and make everyone love him—Bush is our first fully digital model.” So observes LA Weekly editor and media columnist Powers, who bravely admits that he reads books, doesn’t have anything in particular against the French, and reckons that even if Bush supporters are fundamentally and irrevocably wrong, “they are ordinary people who want a safe, orderly life for themselves and their kids and fear that American culture has lost its moral bearing.” As perhaps it has. Certainly it’s lost any sense of manners, which explains why we’re now overrun by “bad winners,” “bragging, sneering, lording it over the losers, and promoting themselves with a crassness that would leave Duddy Kravitz blushing.” Thus Bill O’Reilly gloats over how many books he sells, Dennis Miller crows that Americans ought to be kicking ass wherever we go, and Ann Coulter fills the air with cryptofascist bleatings about how liberals are traitors. Bush, Powers suggests, is the worst of the bad losers, behaving as if he has some sort of mandate from the American people when he squeaked—some might even say stole—into office. Powers takes brilliant turns, as when he carefully compares-and-contrasts Osama bin Laden and Dubya (both trust-fund kids, both veterans of heavy partying in their youth who discovered religion and, worse, now think in “the glossy black-and-white of the faithful”). If his arguments get a little diffuse when his gaze shifts from Bush to the larger culture, Powers sneaks in enough right-on digs at current icons—Schwarzenegger, Reagan, and even, in a nice bit of table-turning, Michael Moore (“thanks to a president he thoroughly detests, his share of the Ownership Society keeps getting bigger”)—to cover the price of admission.
Solid work from a cultural critic who merits a broader audience.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51187-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.
Straight talk to blacks and whites about the realities of racism.
In her feisty debut book, Oluo, essayist, blogger, and editor at large at the Establishment magazine, writes from the perspective of a black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman living in a “white supremacist country.” The daughter of a white single mother, brought up in largely white Seattle, she sees race as “one of the most defining forces” in her life. Throughout the book, Oluo responds to questions that she has often been asked, and others that she wishes were asked, about racism “in our workplace, our government, our homes, and ourselves.” “Is it really about race?” she is asked by whites who insist that class is a greater source of oppression. “Is police brutality really about race?” “What is cultural appropriation?” and “What is the model minority myth?” Her sharp, no-nonsense answers include talking points for both blacks and whites. She explains, for example, “when somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing.” She unpacks the complicated term “intersectionality”: the idea that social justice must consider “a myriad of identities—our gender, class, race, sexuality, and so much more—that inform our experiences in life.” She asks whites to realize that when people of color talk about systemic racism, “they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you” and are asking that they be heard. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Action includes pressing for reform in schools, unions, and local governments; boycotting businesses that exploit people of color; contributing money to social justice organizations; and, most of all, voting for candidates who make “diversity, inclusion and racial justice a priority.”
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58005-677-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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